On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Pete Travis lists@petetravis.com wrote:
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On 09/01/2014 09:30 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to mailto:bruno@wolff.to> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org <mailto:elad@fedoraproject.org>>
wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the
minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to make
the system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
Running in a VM on a desktop is actually a very important usecase. We're targeting developers after all, developers might develop to our platform and test in a vm when running our platform or when running another platform.
-- -Elad Alfassa.
Virtualization opens an entirely different context for hardware requirements. QXL for guests hosted on my low power i3 utility server run gnome-shell quite acceptably; my i7 workstation brings that up to near-native for modern integrated graphics. Traditional cirrus type graphics deliver a wholly unusable experience on the same hardware. QXL isn't a magic bullet, though; on hosts with older hardware, performance definitely degrades. I don't have a lot of experience with VMWare or vbox stacks, but I assume there is a spectrum of unacceptable to adequate to excellent there as well.
Maybe some guidelines specifically for virtualized instances of Workstation would be a good idea. Recommend SPICE/QXL, with general guidelines for other solutions, ie "For best results using Fedora Workstation as a virtual machine, SPICE graphics with the QXL virtual graphics adapter are recommended [link to explanation]. Other virtualization solutions should provide adequate virtualized graphics hardware to ensure the best possible experience."
Separate guidelines for VMs would be a good idea. I'm not sure I'd go into non-KVM setups though. I don't think we're realistically going to be able to 1) target those and 2) test them.
....and maybe something brief about how testing/development in a VM doesn't actually require a responsive desktop environment?
Er... that's somewhat confusing given we're talking about the Workstation product in a VM. I think we'd want to make a good impression of the product in a VM to entice people to install it on their real hardware. Having a responsive desktop for the "desktop" product is probably a high priority.
josh