QEMU 8.2 Released With New VirtIO-Sound & VirtIO-GPU "Rutabaga" Devices (www.phoronix.com)
from KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml to linux@lemmy.ml on 21 Dec 2023 07:56
https://lemmy.ml/post/9580139

#linux

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autotldr@lemmings.world on 21 Dec 2023 08:00 next collapse

This is the best summary I could come up with:


  • QEMU 8.2 adds a new “virtio-sound” device that implements capture and playback from inside a guest using the configured audio backend of the host machine.

  • A new VirtIO-GPU “Rutabaga” device that allows various abstractions of GPU and display virtualization.

This VirtIO-GPU Rutabaga comes from the Android/CrosVM graphics stack and is intended for use with the Android Emulator on QEMU.

QEMU documentation describes this as "virtio-balloon on steroids for Windows guests."

  • QEMU’s 68k Macintosh Quadra 800 emulation can now boot MacOS 7.1, A/UX 3.0.1, Linux, and NetBSD 9.3.

Plus support for 4K page sizes and other ongoing LoongArch enablement work.


The original article contains 305 words, the summary contains 102 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

Engywuck@lemm.ee on 21 Dec 2023 08:30 collapse

good bot

Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi on 21 Dec 2023 12:55 collapse

Hopefully some of this comes to Windows guests. One of the major issues right now is that Windows virtualisation isn’t great. VirtualBox has GPU problems, VMware requires a lot of messing about with kernel modules if you don’t use Ubuntu, if KVM/QEMU is able to make a smooth environment for Windows guests that’d help bring people in who still need Windows for the odd bit of software or two.

I remember there was a GPU driver for Windows but that seems to have stalled?

Edit: Cleared up why I think VMware is a bit of a mess.

netburnr@lemmy.world on 21 Dec 2023 13:33 next collapse

Vmware requires a lot of messing around.

What are you going on about? VMware and Windows work just fine if you install vmware tools.

Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi on 21 Dec 2023 14:27 collapse

I’m talking about the installation process for VMware itself.

I had to help someone non-techy install VMware on Pop!_OS (the OS preinstalled by System76 on their hardware), and it required messing with the kernel modules which fails on Pop!_OS. It seems like VMware builds for a very specific version of Ubuntu which of course, means the kernel module building process fails when you use a kernel version that’s different to what Ubuntu has (which Pop!_OS does and maybe some other Ubuntu-based distros). Thankfully someone on GitHub maintains up-to-date patches for the VMware modules so I was able to guide him through there but this isn’t something someone new to Linux would want to do.

It’s not like simply installing it from a package manager, well unless you use Arch but I’m not putting this person who’s new to Linux on Arch when he just started using CLI.

[deleted] on 21 Dec 2023 14:16 next collapse

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drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Dec 2023 14:50 next collapse

virtio-sound likely will eventually and ufs probably will too. the gpu driver is being worked on by a third party, but it’s still using virgl so I doubt it will be very preformant

UnityDevice@startrek.website on 23 Dec 2023 11:24 collapse

If you need this frequently, I really suggest you look into GPU forwarding. I have a Windows VM setup with a second card and it works perfectly, I use it for games and CAD all the time. Figure out your iommu groups, pop a second card in your computer (and optionally a second nvme drive if you want max performance), and use virt-manager and the arch wiki to set it up.

For accessing the machine you can use a second monitor input, or you can get a window to the machine with looking glass or moonlight. I use moonlight as it lets me play games from my laptop on the couch, and looking glass was causing windows to crash sometimes.

It’s a bit of work to set it all up but when you’re done it should just be one XML file and maybe one modprobe.d config file.

I think I’ve been using this for over a year now and the single pain point I encountered in all that time was maybe that usb input hotplug isn’t supported, though there’s ways to fix that, but I haven’t bothered.