Best way of running VMs for multiple purposes

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gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 12:57 pm

I'd like to be able to run a Windows 10 VM on my Gentoo box so I can use some Windows apps that aren't available for Linux, such as signing software from my gov. and other stuff. I've already tried Gnome Boxes and I tried running Pokémon TCG Live, not a very heavy or intensive game, and it just runs awful. Windows on the desktop lag and there's some keyboard input lag. I'd like to get the game and other stuff running on the VM so I don't have to constantly be plugging and unplugging my external SSD...

I don't lack resources as I have a 9800X3D CPU and an AMD 7900XT, with 16GB of RAM allocated to the VM and 16 threads too.

Is there any efficient way of running a VM on Gentoo with my specific hardware, possibly GPU accel and good performance?

rab0171610 · Post by **rab0171610** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 2:32 pm

Personally, I use Bottles and VirtualBox. Bottles is generally only available as a flatpak but I maintain my own ebuild with dependencies and build from source. It is just a GUI wine wrapper. It is an easy way to manage wine prefixes and install dependencies. I use one wine prefix per application; most are games.

I use VirtualBox for full Windows installations.

I am might be in the minority as I guess that most here prefer more technically advanced solutions such as working with wine directly from the command line and/or qemu.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 2:53 pm

rab0171610 wrote:Personally, I use Bottles and VirtualBox. Bottles is generally only available as a flatpak but I maintain my own ebuild with dependencies and build from source. It is just a GUI wine wrapper. It is an easy way to manage wine prefixes and install dependencies. I use one wine prefix per application; most are games.

I use VirtualBox for full Windows installations.

I am might be in the minority as I guess that most here prefer more technically advanced solutions such as working with wine directly from the command line and/or qemu.

Does it work fine for gaming tho? I've never used it on Linux, but I recall it using the same VirtIO drivers as on GNOME Boxes. I, at least, want a complete 60hz experience without all the input lag I'm experiencing on Boxes.
The games isn't that heavy, it's just a card game with some sprites and animations.

Bottles can't be used in my case, as the TCG Live isn't working under Wine environments due to an issue with something called "Imperva" (I think it's some kind of proxy or network service the game uses).

What was your procedure to get a smooth experience on VirtualBox? Because I'm looking forward to migrate from Boxes to it.

rab0171610 · Post by **rab0171610** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 3:14 pm

You are correct, Wine does not always work for every application.
I generally don't have any of the problems you describe with either Wine or VirtualBox. I honestly can't tell the difference in performance when compared to a native Windows installation provided you set it up correctly. I would think for the application or game you are describing, such as a card game, you should get good performance. My suggestion is to install VirtualBox and go from there. If you have any performance issues, then do some research on your VM machine settings especially with regards to graphics and troubleshoot it. You can also seek help here once you know what your issues are if you even have any. It may likely just work.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 3:25 pm

rab0171610 wrote:You are correct, Wine does not always work for every application.
I generally don't have any of the problems you describe with either Wine or VirtualBox. I honestly can't tell the difference in performance when compared to a native Windows installation provided you set it up correctly. I would think for the application or game you are describing, such as a card game, you should get good performance. My suggestion is to install VirtualBox and go from there. If you have any performance issues, then do some research on your VM machine settings especially with regards to graphics and troubleshoot it. You can also seek help here once you know what your issues are if you even have any. It may likely just work.

Thanks, I will try it out. GNOME Boxes seems to install qemu but it may be lacking the deeper config options available on VirtualBox. I think of it as a simpler way to run a VM just for light tasks.

wjb · Post by **wjb** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 9:16 pm

I do games from 2000's quite happily on a VirtualBox vm of Windows XP. No network access, obviously. 10th gen i7.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 10:40 pm

wjb wrote:I do games from 2000's quite happily on a VirtualBox vm of Windows XP. No network access, obviously. 10th gen i7.

What about the performance in other tasks? Such as opening programs and things like that. It felt sluggish on Boxes.

I'm compiling VirtualBox now, hope I can get the game working!

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Tue Oct 07, 2025 11:57 pm

I personally use qemu for my vm's and there are a few things that can affect speed.

1. video - passthrough is best, near metal performance

2. disk - best speed is to have a real partition with whatever windows version you want
............ if using files, then ext4 gives better performace, but there is some speed loss vs real partition

3. memory, I like to give whatever it needs (64 gb, so I give the vm 16-32 gb)

4. cpu pinning (depends on software or using linux util like taskset)

5. fine tuning the virtual manager, through various options.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 12:08 am

rab0171610 wrote:You are correct, Wine does not always work for every application.
I generally don't have any of the problems you describe with either Wine or VirtualBox. I honestly can't tell the difference in performance when compared to a native Windows installation provided you set it up correctly. I would think for the application or game you are describing, such as a card game, you should get good performance. My suggestion is to install VirtualBox and go from there. If you have any performance issues, then do some research on your VM machine settings especially with regards to graphics and troubleshoot it. You can also seek help here once you know what your issues are if you even have any. It may likely just work.

I'm following the Gentoo Wiki guide for VirtualBox, and on the "GPU accel" section, it says:

Though VirtualBox previously emulated VMWare's SVGA by default, this is no longer a feasible option as mesa has dropped the required 'xa' USE flag after version 25.1 (see bug 957955). Now, the recommended method is to use the kernel modesetting driver. To do so, set the 'VIDEO_CARDS' variable in /etc/portage/make.conf to an empty string:

VIDEO_CARDS=""

and remove x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware.

Wouldn't that just mess up my system? As I'm using the AMDGPU driver with "radeonsi amdgpu".

Edit: I've just noticed I don't have "xf86-video-vmware" installed on my system, so I guess VBox will default to my system's AMDGPU driver, right?

Post by Hu » Wed Oct 08, 2025 1:41 am

When you have a question about a Wiki page, please link to the page in question. In this case, it appears to be 2.5.3: GPU acceleration, which is nested under 2.5 Gentoo guests. Therefore, the advice you are questioning is for when you have a Gentoo guest running inside VirtualBox on a presumably Gentoo host. Your posts in this thread appear to be about using a Windows guest, not a Gentoo guest, in which case section 2.5 does not apply to your use case.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 2:19 am

Hu wrote:When you have a question about a Wiki page, please link to the page in question. In this case, it appears to be 2.5.3: GPU acceleration, which is nested under 2.5 Gentoo guests. Therefore, the advice you are questioning is for when you have a Gentoo guest running inside VirtualBox on a presumably Gentoo host. Your posts in this thread appear to be about using a Windows guest, not a Gentoo guest, in which case section 2.5 does not apply to your use case.

Yes, sorry. I had to reconfig my installed packages and everything as I didn´t read correctly (too late in my country and I'm sleepy

)

By the way, is there any chance I can get Dark Mode for the interface? I've seen it's an option on the official bundled version (same version as the one in the Gentoo repo): https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
Do I need to install using the .run file instead of Portage to get the option? My eyes are melting...

Post by Hu » Wed Oct 08, 2025 1:02 pm

I do not use VirtualBox, so I cannot comment on whether or how its dark mode works. If it has a dark mode, then that ought to be usable in Gentoo. In general, I strongly discourage use of .run files because they almost never integrate properly with the system package manager, leaving you with a mess to clean up if you ever want to update or remove the program.

I use qemu, and have no need of a dark mode there, because the way I use it presents almost no UI elements of its own. It is just a rectangle containing the guest's display, so dark mode is entirely the responsibility of the guest putting a decent color scheme on its virtual monitor.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 3:33 pm

I got VBox running and my VM set, but when I use Host + F for fullscreen, I can the the bottom action bar from VBox but not the VM screen, just my background wallpaper. I'm using i3wm and Vbox hasn't complaint about modules or anything. What could be the cause?

For anyone experiencing this:

Go to User Interface (or Display in older versions).
Under Mini ToolBar, uncheck Show in Full-screen or Seamless mode.

You can still access the toolbar with Host + Home combination. It seems like the bottom bar when on fullscreen is a bit broken on Linux.

rab0171610 · Post by **rab0171610** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 4:18 pm

Some thoughts and suggestions . . .

When the machine is running but not in full screen, from the menu bar at the top of the VM screen make sure View>Auto-resize Guest Display is checked.

Some info about your machine settings may help troubleshoot the issue.
When your machine is off, click or select your machine in the list and open "Settings" for that machine. Give us a rund down of what settings you have selected or see in:
Identity
--OS
--OS Version
Also, what is enabled in all of the tabs under:
System
--Motherboard
--Processor
--Acceleration

For now, have you installed the VirtualBox guest additions inside the Windows guest?
You will need to attach the .iso file to the Virtual Machine for the guest. You can do this from the
menu bar at the top of the running VM by selecting Devices>Insert Guest Additions CD Image.
For Windows it usually is detected as if a CD were inserted in the guest operating system. You can then enter the
guest OS and install it from the taskbar icon notification or My Computer under the CD drive.

If you get an error message stating something akin to 'the image cannot be inserted into the guest operating system', it does not work, or it is not detected by the guest OS, then while the guest VM is turned off you can insert it inside the guest VM's "Settings" under "Storage". In the Devices box on the left of that menu, click on the Empty CD icon. After that is selected, click on the cd icon to the right of Optical Drive IDE Secondary Device 0 in the Attributes section on the right. From the drop down list, select "Choose a Disk File". This will open up the system file browser. Browse to /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso to attach the iso to the machine. When you start the machine, it should be found as inserted into the guest's CD drive.
After installing the VirtualBox Guest additions into the guest, you will need to reboot usually.
Are you able to enter full screen after the Guest Additions have been installed?

Make sure you have the VirtualBox Extension Pack installed. You should probably have installed:
app-emulation/virtualbox
app-emulation/virtualbox-additions
app-emulation/virtualbox-extpack-oracle
app-emulation/virtualbox-modules

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 5:36 pm

rab0171610 wrote:Some thoughts and suggestions . . .

When the machine is running but not in full screen, from the menu bar at the top of the VM screen make sure View>Auto-resize Guest Display is checked.

Some info about your machine settings may help troubleshoot the issue.
When your machine is off, click or select your machine in the list and open "Settings" for that machine. Give us a rund down of what settings you have selected or see in:
Identity
--OS
--OS Version
Also, what is enabled in all of the tabs under:
System
--Motherboard
--Processor
--Acceleration

For now, have you installed the VirtualBox guest additions inside the Windows guest?
You will need to attach the .iso file to the Virtual Machine for the guest. You can do this from the
menu bar at the top of the running VM by selecting Devices>Insert Guest Additions CD Image.
For Windows it usually is detected as if a CD were inserted in the guest operating system. You can then enter the
guest OS and install it from the taskbar icon notification or My Computer under the CD drive.

If you get an error message stating something akin to 'the image cannot be inserted into the guest operating system', it does not work, or it is not detected by the guest OS, then while the guest VM is turned off you can insert it inside the guest VM's "Settings" under "Storage". In the Devices box on the left of that menu, click on the Empty CD icon. After that is selected, click on the cd icon to the right of Optical Drive IDE Secondary Device 0 in the Attributes section on the right. From the drop down list, select "Choose a Disk File". This will open up the system file browser. Browse to /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso to attach the iso to the machine. When you start the machine, it should be found as inserted into the guest's CD drive.
After installing the VirtualBox Guest additions into the guest, you will need to reboot usually.
Are you able to enter full screen after the Guest Additions have been installed?

Make sure you have the VirtualBox Extension Pack installed. You should probably have installed:
app-emulation/virtualbox
app-emulation/virtualbox-additions
app-emulation/virtualbox-extpack-oracle
app-emulation/virtualbox-modules

Hi, I ain't got no problems with my VM, the only issue (not VBox related, probably) is that I'm trying to install a software called "Lossless Scaling" from Steam (inside the W10 VM), and just when the download is starting, Steam crashes. If I try to open it again, it will open and close again, until I uninstall it and repeat the process.

I don't think it's related to being inside a virtual machine, if this was the case, it probably wouldn't even open or load. I'm no experiencing any graphical glitches or anything at all.
I've tried disabling all the effect options on the Steam Launcher, and I'm running the VM with VMSVGA + 3D Accel both checked.

Any idea? I'm going to try VBoxSVGA just right now.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 5:45 pm

Steam keeps crashing regardless the video option set. I've tried solutions specifically for Steam first, but I'm starting to think it has something to do with the VM.

Edit: I think I'm just running out of video memory. Is there any way to increase the max available? Or should I just migrate to QEMU/KVM???

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 6:29 pm

According to google (ai helper)

You can run Steam within a VirtualBox VM by installing a compatible operating system, such as a Linux distribution like Debian or SteamOS, inside the VM and then installing the Steam client as you would on a physical computer. However, you should be aware that running Steam games in a VirtualBox environment will likely result in significantly reduced graphical performance and potential issues with graphics libraries due to the VM's inability to directly access your GPU without advanced configuration like GPU passthrough.

rab0171610 · Post by **rab0171610** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 6:41 pm

gugozte26, I do not recommend running Steam on Linux inside a VM on Linux. Anon-E-moose points that out as well. The best way to do that would be to directly run Steam on the natively installed host Linux OS or dual boot with Windows. I did not realize that you were trying to do that from your earlier posts. If I misunderstood you from the beginning and led you down a rabbit hole, I apologize.
I would run a Windows guest in VirtualBox and occasionally Linux distros just to test out new releases of Linux ISOs to stay current. As pointed out, if you are trying to run other guest Linux distros along side your currently installed host distro, Qemu is probably the best option in that scenario. If you are wanting to run a simple graphical game or application that only has light to moderate resource requirements, then a VirtualBox would be fine. WIne works for that as well. For resource heavy games, I use Wine or a Wine GUI wrapper like Bottles. The other option, as I mentioned, is to dual boot Linux and Windows on different partitions or drives.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 11:01 pm

Anon-E-moose wrote:According to google (ai helper)

You can run Steam within a VirtualBox VM by installing a compatible operating system, such as a Linux distribution like Debian or SteamOS, inside the VM and then installing the Steam client as you would on a physical computer. However, you should be aware that running Steam games in a VirtualBox environment will likely result in significantly reduced graphical performance and potential issues with graphics libraries due to the VM's inability to directly access your GPU without advanced configuration like GPU passthrough.

You are right, but I think the VM didn´t even handle the Steam downloading animations lol. I was trying to install a very light program called Lossless Scaling, for scaling a 30fps capped game that uses DX9. Anyways, I'm setting up QEMU/KVM with the use of virt-manager, so I can passthrough one of my GPU's. Will that improve performance??

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Wed Oct 08, 2025 11:03 pm

rab0171610 wrote:gugozte26, I do not recommend running Steam on Linux inside a VM on Linux. Anon-E-moose points that out as well. The best way to do that would be to directly run Steam on the natively installed host Linux OS or dual boot with Windows. I did not realize that you were trying to do that from your earlier posts. If I misunderstood you from the beginning and led you down a rabbit hole, I apologize.
I would run a Windows guest in VirtualBox and occasionally Linux distros just to test out new releases of Linux ISOs to stay current. As pointed out, if you are trying to run other guest Linux distros along side your currently installed host distro, Qemu is probably the best option in that scenario. If you are wanting to run a simple graphical game or application that only has light to moderate resource requirements, then a VirtualBox would be fine. WIne works for that as well. For resource heavy games, I use Wine or a Wine GUI wrapper like Bottles. The other option, as I mentioned, is to dual boot Linux and Windows on different partitions or drives.

I honestly wouldn't mind keeping the dual boot, but it's sad that most of those little programs, like the ones I use for scaling or even game overlays, all use Windows-only frameworks

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Oct 09, 2025 12:36 am

gugozte26 wrote: Anyways, I'm setting up QEMU/KVM with the use of virt-manager, so I can passthrough one of my GPU's. Will that improve performance??

Video performance would definitely improve.
Once you have windows running in the vm then install the windows drivers for the card, that should be near the performance of dual booting into windows.

I use the vm's for mainly gaming nowadays, no problem, keeps me from having to dual boot.
The nice thing is win7 runs well as a vm, but if I tried to run it natively, there aren't drivers for new hardware with older OS's.

gugozte26 · Post by **gugozte26** » Thu Oct 09, 2025 12:40 am

Anon-E-moose wrote:
gugozte26 wrote: Anyways, I'm setting up QEMU/KVM with the use of virt-manager, so I can passthrough one of my GPU's. Will that improve performance??
Video performance would definitely improve.
Once you have windows running in the vm then install the windows drivers for the card, that should be near the performance of dual booting into windows.

Thanks so much. I downloaded the VirtIO ISO too tho. Should I just install the AMD drivers for Windows or is it better to install the drivers + VirtIO drivers too?

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Oct 09, 2025 9:57 am

The virtio package contains more than just video driver stuff, io speedup, virtual filesystems, etc.

I recommend reading something like https://github.com/bryansteiner/gpu-pas ... h-tutorial to get an overview of whats needed,
and use it as a guideline for installing on your system.

If something is not clear ask rather than just muddle through and then have to reinstall.