[HN Gopher] Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11...
___________________________________________________________________
Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11/macOS/Linux on
Linux
Author : nixcraft
Score : 337 points
Date : 2021-10-08 08:58 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| gizdan wrote:
| Is there a windows image that contains none of the hard
| dependencies like Edge and all stuff? I'm looking for a Windows
| 10/11 with _every_ that 's not necessary stripped out for a local
| VM for when I need Windows. Ideally things like telemetry,
| unnecessary apps, windows store etc all removed would be nice. I
| recall nLite used to be a thing for Windows XP.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Try Windows 10 LTSB if you can get a cheap license online.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| I don't know if there's one out there right now but I think it
| should be possible through the UUP process for creating windows
| install isos. At least if it is possible that'll be how it's
| done these days. That might give you enough info to find it if
| it does exist.
|
| edit: from another comment thread here,
| https://ameliorated.info/ is apparently everything you're
| after. Not sure of any info about it myself but that looks to
| be decently useful.
| implying wrote:
| Took a little while to find the magic words in there:
| https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/blob/af26f41440d63a0...
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I always wondered how is it stealing if you (1) own a copy and,
| (2) Apple effectively stopped charging money for macOS.
| easton wrote:
| I think that the illegal (ish) part comes from Apple making
| macOS free if you're installing it on Apple hardware. They
| don't publicly license it for use on non-Apple hardware,
| although, I would guess that VMWare if not others has a
| license to run it on random x64 servers to test ESXi with
| because setting up a different testing environment of Mac
| Minis to test every change to their hypervisor on instead of
| using their normal testing infrastructure would be dumb.
|
| (or they just do it anyway and don't tell Tim.)
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > I think that the illegal (ish) part comes from Apple
| making macOS free if you're installing it on Apple
| hardware.
|
| I don't think it's true since the phrase in question was
| present also in Mac OS X when we had to purchase each
| version. Apart from that, this part of the license is not
| valid in several European countries. When you think of it,
| it's quite reasonable: how could anyone dictate how you are
| using something you purchased? It makes no any sense.
| gdavisson wrote:
| Ignoring the legal and accounting details, the basic idea is
| that macOS is something that Apple includes with each Mac
| computer that they sell.
|
| If you don't own a Mac, you don't own macOS. If you own a Mac
| and some other computer(s), you own macOS for the Mac, but
| not for the computer(s). You might've purchased an _upgrade_
| to a newer version of macOS, but if you don 't already own a
| Mac, you don't have something to upgrade, so the upgrade
| doesn't grant you ownership of macOS.
|
| Now, from a legal point of view, it's a good deal different
| from (and more complicated than) that, but that's the basic
| idea. So don't make the mistake of thinking that because
| Apple gives macOS away for free _to Mac owners_ , and don't
| use elaborate and onerous copy protection or license-tracking
| nonsense, that you're entitled to install it on something
| other than a Mac.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's hardly stealing if the original owners still have a
| copy. It's more of a breach of terms of service, or
| unlicensed access to intellectual property.
|
| The "theft" spin on copyright violation is the result of
| years of lobbying by the media industry because they foresaw
| a drop in sales when people didn't need to buy the same thing
| over and over again.
| amarshall wrote:
| No one but Apple owns a copy of macOS. They own a license to
| use it according to the terms of that license.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Which is another argument against using the term
| "stealing". At no point does the user deprive Apple of the
| ownership of macOS.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Control is a part of ownership. If you don't control how
| something is used and by whom, you don't really own it.
| So either using it in unauthorized ways is in a manner
| theft, or Apple's "ownership" is not real ownership. I'm
| not sure what the solution is, but IP is a tricky concept
| no matter your position.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| It sounds like Apple don't even own it then if they can't
| prevent people from pirating it.
| amarshall wrote:
| It has nothing to do with actually preventing all
| infringement, but instead seeking enforcement in at least
| some cases. If a copyright owner is aware of substantial
| infringement and chooses not to pursue (or license) they
| may lose their copyright through genericization or other
| means.
|
| (Caveat: I'm not a lawyer, but I learned broadly the
| above from an IP lawyer.)
| ben_w wrote:
| I can't _prevent_ someone from robbing me, just make it
| harder for them to do so and have legal recourse if they
| do it anyway.
|
| This still counts as "having control".
| amarshall wrote:
| Sure, and I didn't argue for or against the use of that
| term. The legal definition of theft varies by
| jurisdiction, but is not necessarily limited to physical
| objects (e.g. services). I have no idea whether it's
| appropriate in this case (I'm not a lawyer), but feels
| more like copyright infringement.
| Tomte wrote:
| Not according to German law.
| amarshall wrote:
| Do tell more (genuinely curious).
| passivate wrote:
| You're technically correct, but its debatable whether all
| parts of EULAs are legally binding/enforceable.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Actually I own several dvds that contain legitimate copies
| of Mac OS X (back when it came on dvds)
| amarshall wrote:
| You may own the physical disc, but to use the software on
| it you need to accept the license terms.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Because to do that, I have to make another copy into the
| memory of my computer.
| account42 wrote:
| As with all information, society as a whole "owns" macOS -
| Apple only has been granted a temporary monopoly of this
| information in order to encourage them to create more.
| amarshall wrote:
| Practically, what's the difference until their copyright
| expires?
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| What is this?
| lelanthran wrote:
| ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputer
| Inc
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Bonus points if you also know these ones (without searching
| for them):
|
| K4HVD...
|
| 09 F9 11 02 9D...
| hunter2_ wrote:
| The first looks like a Windows VLK (maybe XP?)
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| No thats FCKGW
|
| I can't believe I remembered that.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| It's odd the things we remember. I memorized a 25-digit
| Windows 98 Key because of how many times I reinstalled
| it. I don't remember why I had to reinstall it so many
| times, but I sure remember the key!
| latortuga wrote:
| I don't know them but I'm going to venture a guess that
| at least 1 of them is the DVD decryption key.
| mc32 wrote:
| I guess you're just missing the Adobe CS Keys that didn't
| need the license server after they shut them down.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Won't someone take pity on Apple Computer?
|
| In fact the company changed its name to just "Apple" back
| in 2007. So maybe this doesn't even count.
| [deleted]
| sodality2 wrote:
| It's a Rot13-encoded string: "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedp
| leasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc". It seems to be the string
| that is supposed to make MacOS only run on certified systems,
| but it's obviously been reverse engineered and now it needs
| to be added to any Mac emulators to work.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Can't the emulator just patch out the code that checks for
| that string?
| simcop2387 wrote:
| That would likely need to be built for every version of
| MacOS that's ever been made, it's easier to emulate the
| hardware and provide the key it's looking for. That part
| alone shouldn't violate any ToS or laws on it's own, as
| long as the key isn't provided by the emulator/vendor.
| That will still allow you to still virtualize MacOS on
| the actual hardware (as is required by the license of the
| OS) without having a hacky patch in place that could lead
| to crashes or failures to boot whenever an update is
| applied to the guest.
|
| disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice,
| etc.
| skissane wrote:
| VirtualBox supports two methods of operation:
|
| (1) You supply this value in the "DeviceKey" config
| parameter
|
| (2) Ensure the "GetKeyFromRealSMC" boolean config parameter
| is enabled (not sure if it is turned on by default or not).
| When enabled, VirtualBox retrieves the value from the SMC
| of your Mac.
|
| Obviously method (2) only works if your host is a Mac.
| Apple doesn't supply a public API to retrieve this value,
| so VirtualBox has some code which runs inside a macOS
| kernel extension, and directly uses the SMC hardware
| registers to request it. [ _EDIT_ : Actually, turns out
| macOS does have an undocumented API for this - talk to
| AppleSMC using IOServiceGetMatchingService,
| IOConnectCallStructMethod, etc - and they use it, but they
| still fall back to direct hardware access if the API call
| fails, or if Windows/Linux/etc is the host OS and Apple
| hardware is detected.] VirtualBox already has a bunch of
| kexts needed to provide various features, and so this is
| just a bit more code in one of those kexts.
|
| Option (2) is a lot of extra complexity compared to option
| (1), but has the advantage of being legally much cleaner.
| Option (2) only works on Apple hardware, and so by using
| option (2) Apple's license condition, of only virtualising
| macOS on Apple hardware, is automatically enforced.
|
| Considering that VirtualBox is from Oracle, and as well as
| open source, they also sell it as a commercial product, you
| can understand why Oracle's lawyers want option (2).
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I don't see why someone would opt for option 2 when
| virtualizing macOS on an Apple machine.
| skissane wrote:
| So my understanding - if you run VirtualBox on macOS, and
| you choose macOS as Guest OS type when creating your VM,
| it automatically turns GetKeyFromRealSMC on. That means
| you are using option (2) by default. You can always
| switch to option (1) instead if you want to, but if you
| are virtualising macOS-on-macOS, there is little reason
| to.
|
| From reading the VirtualBox source code [0] - it also
| automatically enables GetKeyFromRealSMC if it detects
| Apple hardware, even if the host OS isn't macOS. So, if
| you install Windows on your Mac, and then create a macOS
| VM in VirtualBox, it will automatically select option (2)
| as well. (I think, they actually include the code to talk
| to the Apple SMC in their Windows and Linux kernel
| drivers too.)
|
| (Note I haven't actually tried doing this myself, this is
| just what I gather from the source.)
|
| [0] https://github.com/mdaniel/virtualbox-org-svn-vbox-
| trunk/blo...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > but if you are virtualising macOS-on-macOS, there is
| little reason to.
|
| Not needing to run a kext just to retrieve a known
| hardcoded string seems like a very good reason.
| skissane wrote:
| You don't need to use a kext. You can instead use IOKit
| to talk to the AppleSMC driver over a Mach port. Works
| even without root: https://gist.github.com/vagelim/dd5be2
| 802ecb097b81cf07711f6a...
|
| VirtualBox has code to do the above. But it also has code
| in one of its kexts to do it by talking directly to the
| hardware, in case (for whatever reason) this API doesn't
| work; it tries IOKit first and then calls the kext as a
| fallback. And, the kext doesn't solely exist to talk to
| the SMC, it does a bunch of other things too. I'm not
| sure whether VirtualBox works without its kexts, but if
| it doesn't, it isn't because of this reason.
|
| (When I wrote my original comment above, I didn't know
| you could do this through the IOKit API, although I've
| since edited that comment to mention it.)
| OJFord wrote:
| I assume the `tr` is to avoid detection, there's a tiny bit
| more info here:
| https://www.nicksherlock.com/2021/06/installing-
| macos-12-mon... (grep for 'OSK')
|
| Seems people really avoid saying the value, ('don't be
| surprised it doesn't look like a random string') maybe
| there's some history of Apple requesting people cease &
| desist wherever they find it, I don't know.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's easy enough to search for "isa-applemsc":
|
| https://github.com/search?q=isa-applesmc&type=code
|
| I'm guessing it's more of a philosophical stance rather
| than avoiding detection. Like _" Apple isn't going to make
| me put the string 'dontsteal' in my repo"_.
| OJFord wrote:
| Fair enough, I just had no idea to search for that. (I
| searched 'OSK' because that was the variable name and it
| seemed not specific to quickemu.)
| m463 wrote:
| apple's eula allows you to run macos on apple hardware.
|
| Just install proxmox on a mac mini or old mac pro and run macos
| VMs
| rcarmo wrote:
| This is pretty handy. I set up a KVM guest the other day and it
| was a very straightforward affair, but I can see how this can
| streamline testing.
|
| I do wonder if it can use KVM directly instead of QEMU (I can
| always move the .qcow after, just curious as to how it would work
| with virsh)
| maccolgan wrote:
| What do you mean by using KVM directly? Using the KVM module
| directly, without an userspace component?
| rcarmo wrote:
| Using virsh and virt-manager instead of qemu.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's less direct; libvirt wraps qemu
| pizza234 wrote:
| Neat. Something not to forget is that USB devices (host)
| passthrough can be tricky, as it's a passthrough of the device,
| not the port. In difficult situations,
| https://github.com/darkguy2008/hotplugger comes handy (although
| it needs setup work).
| ncrmro wrote:
| For my gaming windows vm in addition to passing through the gpu
| I have a dedicated usb card that solves things like Bluetooth
| controllers acting up
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I'm not sure how it works now, but a few years ago it was illegal
| to use more than one copy of Windows in this way (provided that
| you already have a purchased copy). If you wanted to have two
| instances, you had to purchase a second copy. I'm not sure what
| the relevant terms are for macOS now apart from the fact that in
| the old days VMware had an artificial block you need to remove in
| order to run Mac OS X. It would be interesting to know the
| current legal ramifications.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The old trick of buying an OEM copy of Windows (instead of
| paying full retail) when you were not an OEM building a
| computer to be sold to others was just as "illegal".
| detaro wrote:
| That wasn't "illegal" at all in jurisdictions that recognize
| the first-sale doctrine for licenses (e.g. the EU)
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It violated the EULA.
|
| I don't recall anyone, including well known retailers
| selling the OEM version of Windows to home users, caring
| about it.
| detaro wrote:
| It violated a legally void clause of the EULA. Do you
| have a source that the VM-related restrictions are
| equally void?
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| Was it illegal, or against a non-enforceable contract?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| AFAIK you can use Windows unlicensed as long as you activate it
| after evaluation. You're right that you can only run one
| instance of a given Windows product code on a machine for long-
| time use, though.
|
| The last I heard about the macos situation is that
| virtualisation of macOS is allowed as long as you do it on
| Apple hardware that you have a license to run macOS on. You can
| run as many virtual machines on your mac as you want, as long
| as you've paid for the OS on your mac, which you can't buy
| separately anymore (making any restrictions on licenses a full
| ban on macOS VMs, which nobody wants). Perhaps you could buy
| additional licenses through second hand shops, depending on
| your jurisdiction.
|
| As for legal ramifications, I don't think either Microsoft or
| Apple will care if you use this for your personal projects.
| Don't try this as a business, though, because that's where the
| lawyers start caring.
|
| Legally, you'll probably be liable for a civil lawsuit from
| either Apple or Microsoft. I don't think it's actually
| considered a crime to run a copy of software without a license
| in most countries.
| my123 wrote:
| > You can run as many virtual machines on your mac as you
| want
|
| No, the EULA says:
|
| > (iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional
| copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual
| operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or
| control that is already running the Apple Software, for
| purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during
| software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d)
| personal, non-commercial use.
| kevincox wrote:
| Interesting. I was always under the impression that you can
| run a macOS VM as long as it is on Apple hardware. But this
| says "that is already running the Apple Software".
|
| Does that mean Apple Hardware -> Linux -> macOS is not
| allowed? Or is it simply saying that all 3 copies must be
| on the same machine? So you can run Apple Hardware -> Linux
| -> macOS as your "primary copy" and two more macOS VMs on
| that same Apple Hardware?
| jasomill wrote:
| IANAL, but this whole section of the Big Sur license is a
| bit of a mess to read and understand -- for example, per
| section 2B(i), copies of the OS downloaded from the Mac
| App Store by individuals may only be used for "personal,
| non-commercial use", and downloaded from the MAS only on
| computers running _older_ versions of the OS.
|
| In other words, for an individual (vs. a "commercial
| enterprise or educational institution"), both of the
| following appear to violate the license:
|
| (1) Downloading Big Sur from the Mac App Store using a
| machine running Big Sur itself, for any purpose: the
| virtualization section 2B(iii) expressly _excludes_ the
| term "download" from the phrase "download, install, use
| and run", and, while the other section 2B(i) applicable
| to individuals does permit downloads, it only applies to
| computers running Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra,
| El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, or Lion.
|
| (2) Using Big Sur for any commercial purpose, _e.g.,_
| working from home as an employee, or non-personal
| purpose, _e.g.,_ producing flyers for a school bake sale.
| theknarf wrote:
| What does this solve that isn't already solved by Vagrant?
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Or even libvirt/the various virt-* utilities (eg: virt-install)
|
| I'm not against tooling like this, but as someone already
| pretty familiar with KVM... I think I'd be quicker with virsh
| as I've been operating
| yebyen wrote:
| I didn't use this, but a similar/related project that is for
| MacOS as host OS, https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-
| virgl
|
| Vagrant is an orthogonal tool to this, it is a VM orchestrator
| not an actual VM. What does this do: well, qemu doesn't have
| virgl support merged yet, so you need to go to some lengths to
| compile it for yourself.
|
| All of the other stuff (spice, virtio) is for "it should be a
| nice user experience and perform well" above and beyond simply
| being fast enough to use. In other words, you should be able to
| copy and paste between the host OS and the guest. You should be
| able to slide your mouse across the border of the VM window and
| do some clicking around then simply slide it back out and use
| your mouse with native host-OS windows again. It should have
| all of the features you expect and not force you to read a
| bunch of tutorials to find the features you expect from your
| desktop VM.
|
| These things are all not granted when you use qemu out of the
| box. I have this intense 25-lines "qemu" script for invoking
| qemu-system properly. It was enlightening but I'm not sure how
| much I was enriched by the process of actually figuring all
| this out.
|
| Quickemu is, I guess, for making figuring out all this stuff
| and making it easier to do (and on Linux.)
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I have this intense 25-lines "qemu" script for invoking
| qemu-system properly. It was enlightening but I'm not sure
| how much I was enriched by the process of actually figuring
| all this out.
|
| Do you have your script posted publicly somewhere?
| yebyen wrote:
| Yes! https://github.com/kingdonb/dot/blob/ubuntu-
| vm/bin/qemu
|
| This expects you're using the special qemu from the prior
| link, compiled with homebrew. (else I think there will be
| no virtio-vga-gl video driver?)
|
| The guest OS is an Ubuntu VM. I think the instructions say
| to use a recent Fedora/Silverblue for a reason (there are
| some things that don't quite work right around window
| resizing.)
|
| Each time I start the VM, it shows up with tiny tiny pixels
| and the menubar does not work. I switch to another app,
| switch back, go to the menu and enable "zoom to fit" and
| it's off to the races. Other things to be aware of, if you
| resize the window it actually scales the pixels, (which is
| OK and doesn't even have any noticeable perf impact because
| OpenGL, I guess)
| codetrotter wrote:
| Thanks :)
| smusamashah wrote:
| I want to run many old windows [95 - XP] applications and games.
| If there is a way to have minimal os emulator (at least with all
| dependencies of that app/game) it would be great to have it as a
| container for that app.
|
| I tried setting up qemu once by downloading many images. Almost
| none worked with apps I wanted to run. Also I had a very hard
| time finding a sane qemu documentation in one place. It's wiki is
| very messy to go through.
|
| So is there anything to run win 98 to win xp apps in
| emulator/sandbox/container easily?
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Best I've found so far is dosbox-x at https://dosbox-x.com/
| edward wrote:
| I made a spelling correction:
| https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/pull/66
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's sad that Qemu is so hard to use that scripts like this are
| necessary.
|
| All this autodetection of the OS to apply tweaks and workarounds
| to make the OS run properly should ideally be eliminated
| entirely, and if that really isn't possible, it should be part of
| Qemu itself rather than requiring a special wrapper script to
| apply the right flags to make things work.
| maccolgan wrote:
| You are not really supposed to run QEMU directly if you are
| looking for that kind of experience, that's why libvirt exists.
| Other than that, QEMU should really be a generic emulator
| rather than being infested with platform-specific stuff,
| everything else should be independently maintained and
| pluggable. (Autodetection is also extremely fragile, and takes
| away from keeping a VM a VM)
| londons_explore wrote:
| But it would be easy to design qemu to have 1000+ config
| options which are on/off/auto settings, and the 'auto' mode
| is autodetected based on which OS is probably running.
|
| Nothing stops someone overriding some or all of those flags
| to whatever values they like. It's still a power user tool,
| just one that also 'just works' for common usecases of people
| who don't want to manually set the IRQ number for the DMA
| controller by hand...
| q3k wrote:
| > But it would be easy to design qemu to have 1000+ config
| options which are on/off/auto settings, and the 'auto' mode
| is autodetected based on which OS is probably running.
|
| That would add a ton of new responsibility to a codebase
| that so far has been doing none of this. It would have to
| be aware of different operating systems, operating system
| image formats for autodetection, OS releases and their
| corresponding quirks, ... And some way to test this, and
| test this automatically, so that this stuff doesn't
| immediately rot away. People would begin to depend on this,
| and any change in this behaviour would be a breaking bug,
| and would introduce implicit stability contracts for
| complex scenarios.
|
| Let qemu be low-level emulator and make zero assumptions
| about how it's being used - that makes life so much easier
| for those of us who integrate it into non-standard
| scenarios. Libvirt gives you everything needed for typical
| 'I wanna run a commercial OS in a VM on my desktop/server',
| and can afford to make assumptions about its usage
| scenario.
| esjeon wrote:
| I've always kept a script like this on my computer, but the idea
| of "optimized" is very subjective, volatile, and prone to change.
| Also, that was a reason why I ditched libvirt, because once its
| internal change impacted the performance on my side. There's just
| no _correct_ answer here.
|
| Certainly, however, this can be handy if one needs to quickly
| spin up something.
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| alufers wrote:
| What I would really like to exist, is a VM image for Windows 10,
| without all the telemetry, updates and anti-virus software. I
| hate that when I need to test something on IE, my laptop's fans
| start spinning up, and the VM is unusable, because Microsoft
| decided its a good time to scan the whole disk and consume all
| the vCPUs allocated to the vm.
| c0npr wrote:
| Read from other posts that a win10 ameliorated unofficial build
| exist.
|
| Seems functional and depends on how much you trust the guys
| behind it. (or compile your own)
|
| https://ameliorated.info/
|
| Another option is to buy a ltsc win10 license (if you can find
| it cheap online)
| gavinray wrote:
| Thanks for posting this -- hadn't heard of it!
|
| I use the Windows Insider program to run legitimate Windows,
| and used a bunch of debloat/decrapify programs from Github to
| try to remove the worst offenders. But damn does Windows
| Defender and some of the other stuff really ream my
| resources, and there doesn't seem to be any easy way of
| permanently disabling them =(
|
| I'd never heard of an "LTSC" Windows either. Interesting.
|
| ---
|
| EDIT: Ahh it says there's no support for DirectX12, only
| Vulkan?
|
| I don't know much about this stuff -- I thought it was a
| software SDK you could just install. But if not, that seems
| like a pretty huge con:
|
| https://wiki.ameliorated.info/doku.php?id=faq#is_directx_12_.
| ..
| jbaber wrote:
| I think that's what https://reactos.org/ is supposed to be, but
| I haven't personally installed it.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| It's not. ReactOS is a long-running project aiming at
| creating an open source OS that is fully Windows compatible
| so you can run Windows programs on it.
|
| While it doesn't have telemetry and you can run it as a VM
| (arguably the better choice, given it's state), it is not
| Windows 10 by any stretch, and I guess it doesn't run the
| latest IE version (but I haven't tried it in ages)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| For legal argument and for macOS I wonder whether I can run this
| in bootcamp Ubuntu then ...
|
| For windows alone I wonder as windows do allow no activation
| (other than ...) and should it ok?
| inickt wrote:
| Legally, I think yes? You can definitely run macOS under ESXi
| when it is installed on a real Mac, so I can't imagine the
| difference between a type 1 and type 2 hypervisor making a
| difference.
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| FWIW I use my Windows 10 Pro (VLK) license on my gaming PC, and
| as a virtual machine when using Linux. It's undergone 3
| activations, initially for the desktop, once when I was using
| VirtualBox and the last when I converted my VDI to VMDK when I
| migrated to VMware. All activations were several months apart
| however.
|
| Windows activation servers were happy enough with that, without
| any install becoming unactivated (other than the VirtualBox to
| VMware conversion which is the 3rd activation).
|
| While you can use Windows unactivated but it restricts access
| to various settings, which may not be important to you
| depending on your use case.
| trothamel wrote:
| I like this.
|
| Does anyone know what how to type special keys, like ctrl-alt-
| delete, in qemu/quickemu?
| matja wrote:
| If QEMU is compiled with graphical window support, and is
| started without `-nodefaults`, then you can press ctrl-alt-2 to
| switch to the monitor, type "sendkey ctrl-alt-delete", then
| press ctrl-alt-1 to switch back to the emulated display.
|
| Common QEMU frontends may have a UI button or keyboard sequence
| to do this for you (they connect to the monitor backend and
| send the same command, either as text or as JSON (in "qmp"
| mode)).
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| If anyone tries running Photoshop under Windows using this and
| has good performance please tag me in a comment. I've migrated
| several times from Qemu, VirtualBox and settled on VMware player
| (for non commercial usage).
|
| I found that to be the "best" performing, although still leaves a
| lot to be desired and having to open the application, manually
| sign kernel drivers and then reboot after every kernel upgrade is
| a little tiresome.
| inickt wrote:
| Are you passing in a second GPU to the VM using VFIO? Otherwise
| I don't believe graphics will be accelerated.
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| Sadly no, my Ryzen doesn't have an iGPU and I only have the
| one dedicated GPU. VMware's software? acceleration is
| partially useful however, there are some bugs requiring
| disabling transparency in Windows but various Direct X
| programs run mostly acceptably. I find it the best performing
| of the 3 setups when using GPU passthrough is not available.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| If this is a desktop, just get a cheap & basic PCI-e card
| with DVI output to use for your host and pass through your
| actual GPU to the guest.
| shivak wrote:
| The first problem is rendering within the guest. If you
| only have one GPU, then GVT-g [1] virtualizes it with just
| a bit of overhead. But it's Intel only.
|
| The second problem is getting those pixels onto your screen
| in the host. SPICE is not as fast as Looking Glass [2],
| which sets up a shared memory buffer between the host and
| guest. This has acceptable performance even for modern
| games.
|
| The OP doesn't seem to utilize these techniques, so I don't
| think it can plausibly claim to have the fastest
| configuration - at least not yet.
|
| [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_GVT-g
|
| [2] https://looking-glass.io
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Thanks! TIL [1,2]
| acatton wrote:
| While I appreciate the effort, and the code is very readable. I
| just want to give a friendly warning that these shell scripts
| just download random stuff from the internet and run this random
| stuff without checking any integrity/signature.
|
| Apart from that, I will definitely use that project as a
| documentation for "how to run MacOS/Windows in KVM". Cool project
| :) .
| password4321 wrote:
| It does check SHA256 for Ubuntu images, but nothing else I
| could see.
|
| https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/blob/af26f41440d63a0...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It seems to be grabbing the MacOS system recovery images
| straight off of Apple's servers.
| coldacid wrote:
| Which, without some form of certificate pinning, could
| still be MITM'd. At least if there's a catalogue of hashes
| for everything it downloads (hard-coded or configurable by
| the user, latter preferred) then at least it can verify the
| right files are being downloaded regardless of source.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Where would the user realistically get these?
| coldacid wrote:
| Well that's a matter of trust as well, isn't it? I would
| assume that even if it's user configurable, the app
| itself should still ship with an up to date catalogue
| whenever a new release is made. After all you're already
| trusting the app itself at that point.
| genewitch wrote:
| From the internet!
| saagarjha wrote:
| If you are having your SSL connection to Apple MITMed,
| then you have much bigger problems. Ones like "why do you
| have a malicious root cert in your keychain?!"
| geniium wrote:
| It's a good feedback, while not open an issue to give feedback
| on GitHub or better, create a PR?
| acatton wrote:
| Somebody else already opened an issue
| https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/issues/70
| hda111 wrote:
| Why? I'm happy with Vagrant (libvirt/VirtualBox), Multipass and
| LXD (also provides secreboot + UEFI VMs + USB redirection). No
| need for another tool.
| moondev wrote:
| Can multipass launch an accelerated virgl desktop?
|
| Vagrant depends on premade boxes normally built with packer.
|
| This tool is much more convenient
| 0des wrote:
| Have you tried Dropbox?
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