this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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166
There are sane people with this many VMs on a personal machine, right? RIGHT? (startrek.website)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Half of these exist because I was bored once.

The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.

I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.

The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (3 children)

1000167081

[–] tuck182 13 points 2 months ago

*sane

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

*some

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

*lame

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I guess you should use proxmox at this point 🤣

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Honestly they really should

[–] thedeadwalking4242 2 points 2 months ago

I mean is there any really reason though, they both run on the same subsystem and they aren’t doing anything crazy

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

There are many many many insane people who are running no virtual machines at all.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mutahar please log in to your main account

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[–] tdawg 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

linux users are sane?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Users are sane?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

With that many Windows (gasp) ones, no... I'm afraid you are not

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I have about twice this many VMs and about this many running at any given time.

I use Qubes btw

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What do you use it for? How's the daily-driver experience?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Its my only computer. I couldn't go back to anything else. Every time I double click Firefox, it opens a new VM. When I close Firefox, the VM is destroyed.

Email is in a separate VM. Email attachments also open in a disposable VM. USB devices are quarantined unless I connect them to a specific VM. Its a game changer.

Cons: I need as much ram as I used to need when I ran Windows. Watching videos is a bit choppy at full screen sometimes. And I can't play any video games.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Sounds like some pretty serious cons

Out of curiosity why do you like qubes? Having everything in a VM doesn't sound that great to me

I get that the main concern of it is security but what do you do that it demands that level of hardening? I've only ever got one virus in my life that I know of as it is and that was on windows

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Lol wut? Those pros far outweigh the cons. But I guess I don't care about video games?

I have money on my computer, and I have a company that has customer info. That's enough of a reason for me to want to protect my shit better than running one big, super-vulnerable system

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not op but I do a lot of architecture and infrastructure work on top of my normal dev work so keeping everything separated and per-client has become a pretty important advantage for me personally

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah I also consult with many different clients. Sometimes those clients need me to install sketch software. Thank god I can do this in a silo in Qubes, or it could endanger my other clients.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fwiw I had to tinker a bit to get good video playback, Fedora was always choppy for me for some reason but debian is typically smooth with hw accel disabled.

As for the gaming, depending on your setup (I have a desktop and T480 I keep in sync) you can absolutely run two video cards and do PCI passthrough on one to a gaming VM. I have mine set up with a dedicated NIC and USB card and just use a KVM to swap between Qubes and Windows (for now) and it's worked really well. Had to play around a ton to get the full speed out of the GPU though and it only seemed to work in windows so hopefully get that going for a Linux hvm one day.

Absolutely agree there is no going back, I have all of my work stuff entirely hardware agnostic and a full on replica of my work desktop ready to go in a moment should the desktop die. Apart from that keeping client work isolated has been such a game changer.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Yes, but usually they'd have a more robust VM management system to stay sane for long.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Hell to update them regularly 👀

[–] Dagamant 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Nah, most of the windows ones don’t get updates any more and the Linux ones can get a script that updates on boot. Takes longer to start up but handles the job itself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That’s why I’m starting to prefer LTSC.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Is this like opening tons of browser tabs?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I think you have a problem, there needs to be more to be normal.

[–] ikidd 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Interesting enough, there is a project that I've found that runs Windows in a Docker container as a VM.

https://github.com/dockur/windows

I run a Windows 10 LTSC that way to run things like Blue Iris for my security cameras, and some stuff to track my solar installation.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

It's only insane if you have them all running at once.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I mean, people collect all sorts of weird shit

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not VMs but I have way more docker containers. I run most things as containers which keeps the base OS nice and clean and free from dependency hell.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How much disk space have you got??

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

It's a terabyte SSD. I've currently got 136 GB left on it. I think part of it might be they're auto-expanding qcow2 images, so they don't actually take up the full space provisioned for them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I have probably a couple of more Linux/BSD VMs than here (with some with GPU passthrough and one or two for ARM crossbuilding and so on) but only 2 Windows VMs - the only 2 I have legitimate licenses for.

But am I normal? Most would disagree. 😅

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

10, plain 11, 7, and funny enough, Server 2022 are all legit licenses (I can get a key for server through my university). Actually, I'm pretty sure the 11 one, I upgraded a Windows 7 VM to 10, then to 11.

Every other Windows version that needs it (11 LTSC, 8.1, and Vista), I just temporarily host a phony KMS server whenever it needs to be reactivated.

I apologize for talking so much about Windows on a Linux sub. May Stallman break into my house and give me 10 lashes as I slumber.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

The Windows XP and Windows 7 I have are also from my university, from a long long time ago.😃

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I do have as many too at work.

I use one VM for each iteration of my automation software. Our factory has machines ranging from the 90s to present day, and they use different software environments to be programmed. In order to minimize the risk of data loss, we have one virtual machine with every software environment, that way if one gets corrupted, the damage is contained. It also makes them easier to export to new computers when we need to replace ours.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I always remove any virtual machines every time I'm done with it and reinstall if I need to use it again

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

On the joke, define "sane". 😬

On a serious note, I think there are valid reasons to have several VMs other than "I was bored". In my case, for example, I have a total of 7 VMs, where 2 are miscellaneous systems to test things out, 2 are for stuff that I can't normally run on Linux, 2 are offline VMs for language dictionaries, and 1 is a BlissOS VM with Google programs in case I can't/don't want to use my phone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

MacOS 15 on proxmox ? How do you make the iso exactly ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think this VM is still on Sonoma, actually. I still need to upgrade.

I can't remember exactly what I did to get an installer image, but there's a million shell scripts online for downloading macOS installer images. For booting it, I use this premade OpenCore for KVM/Proxmox. I have to check if I made other modifications (I run on an AMD CPU), but I think I mainly just had to set the serial and model - I personally used a 2019 Mac Pro.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Have you automated creation?

[–] InverseParallax 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah.

My home server runs that many, but it's a monster dual xeon.

The freebsd instances have a ton of jails, the Linux vms have a ton of lxc and docker containers.

It's how you run many services without losing your mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

not even sure distro tube has this many lmao

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