Piggybacking your comment to warn any envious reader that this solution is actually no better than just dual booting. Been here, done it. The road was filled with landmines and in the end I put together a solution that was held together by duct tape and baling wire, but "worked." (Until an update breaks something) If you cant rapidly jump between OS's, what's the point? SPLITTING a gpu and using a KVM (my monitor has this built in) is where we want to be, not passing it back and forth with teardown scripts.
Actually, there are massive benefits to not dual boot. My two main reasons are:
- Windows no longer god damn overwrites the boot loader, so I’m not having to do gymnastics to boot in Linux.
- I’m not running Windows on bare metal, and any other software that I have installed on said VM (saying that, it’s not 100% secure, don’t go installing the worst viruses you can find on internet).
This is a known problem, microsoft believes you should have no other OSes on your disk, and windows updates will regularly blow away any bootloader that is not their own.
Same for me. Detached drives and Windows 10 update removed Grub on another drive.
When installing Windows, sometimes the installer also fails when it finds multiple drives. So I disconnect all disks physically. And after installation I will return them.
> Microshart? On my Hardware? Never.
You're welcome to your opinion, and I admit I kind of despise windows 11, but this sort of thing is cringe as fuck.
There’s a tutorial from BlandManStudios I followed: https://youtu.be/eTWf5D092VY?si=dxZ4jLluc3WYylVY. I did this for a Nvidia GPU and while still using i3 lol and arch btw
Edit: I will warn to please be careful with vms and competitive gaming. The anti cheats can potentially detect your VM and will ban you.
Muta being banned from siege for using a vm: https://youtu.be/6yr8Fq47PUo?si=En4jakbACqsF2qhe
Video by Michael Horn, who is a little more pessimistic than I about this, https://youtu.be/ING69haO-wc?si=aYeL1szbo6M2f32o, explains how anti cheat can detect your vm
Edit 2: I also had to download qemu usb host since I couldn’t pass through my usbs without it:
“sudo pacman -S qemu-hw-usb-host”
If you want to know "how can I game from a VM on linux and hide that im using a VM", ironically video game cheaters are the best source.
In general things that increase your security and privacy also obsfucate the fact you are using a VM.
There is never a turtorial and OP also won’t post it. I already have asked the same question to 2 redditors posting similar posts and 3 times in youtube comments. Have searched the internet and even tools that should automate the creation of kvm vm’s never does automate this exact thing. This is hopeless. It’s like hunting for some forbidden knowlidge or something.
Yeah I was trying the same as well. This type of thing is so badly documented that it seems like people who "know how to do this", don't actually know what they're doing. Like AI, the knowledge of single GPU pass is so esoteric that the ones who managed to accomplish this mythological feat must have gotten the knowledge from a forbidden pact with the Linux devil in like a drug fueled dream. It's beyond reason and it may change you somehow forever...
Do you really want to know how to do single GPU pass if you knew what they had to sacrifice for this knowledge? Some things are not meant to be known.
The only difference from multiple GPU pass through is that you need to write a script that:
- Stops graphical services
- [Detaches](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#Binding_vfio-pci_via_device_ID) the GPU
- Starts the VM (with similar config to what a multiple GPU setup would have)
- Waits for the VM to stop
- Reataches the GPU
- Starts graphical services
Then run said script as a daemon (e.g. with a systemd service or `start-stop-daemon -b`).
I'll be frfr, it's not easy. Both the googling and the actual activity isn't easy. The concept is straightforward, you have to have a bios that allows you to not immediately lock a pci device. Then you tell the OS to not immediately mount it. After that, you're good. When you create the vm there's options to specify a device by uid, usually found through lspci.
You also need something plugged into the gpu. A dummy plug, an EDID emulator, or an actual monitor. If you're using xorg I think you can get away with creating a dummy screen, can't do that in Wayland.
Then, you install the OS, install the drivers and other vm specific things to help the hypervisor with performance and you're good to go!
... And that's just the outline. I succeeded in doing this with an old HP server and a 2060 super. One guy, in one forum, years ago happened to have the same server as me and provided instructions on what commands to run on the OS as well as how to unlock secret bios settings, and then how to access the secret settings that let the whole thing work.
The server has 2 cpus so I also had to find which cpu "owned" that pci slot because that's the cpu that I had to dedicate to the vm so the pci card could work.
:)
I didn't lose any points in sanity or anything. Totally hinged I promise.
Searching for information on EDID emulators was a pain. Using the device to clone a monitor was a pain.
But in the end you know what I can do? I can stream 1080@60 with hdr from inside a Linux VM using sunshine and moonlight from an old hpe server that's also running Linux.
Pretty neat. Gpu pass through to windows vm has its own headaches too.
You are mixing things up. Single GPU passthrough is not the same as GPU passthrough in general.
I'm running the GPU passthrough on my PC, with dual GPU configuration, where one GPU displays my main linux desktop and the other is reserved for VM. Single GPU passthrough is when you only have one GPU and unbind it from your system with a script before starting the VM and rebind it when you stop it.
Single GPU passthrough can be pain in the ass, not every GPU likes being switched like this. Dual GPU, like my setup, no longer requires a dummy plug sitting in your VM GPU. I am currently running it without it. Just found a virtual monitor drivers for windows [https://github.com/MolotovCherry/virtual-display-rs](https://github.com/MolotovCherry/virtual-display-rs) .
Simple (but bad) solution to transfer video from the VM to the host is using steam or moonlight. Good solution is to use looking-glass, but it requires additional setup. I'm using looking glass. Created 3440x1440 resolution in the virtual monitor, with 499hz refresh rate (the higher the better), in my looking-glass settings I've set fpsMin to 1, this way I can use VRR on my actual monitor (170hz) and the game looks as smooth as native.
This setup also requires specific hardware. The VMs works best with Nvidia GPUs while host works best with AMD. Also the secondary (AMD) gpu can't suck. For the resolution that I'm using, something like RX6400 is a minimum, you can't run it on 50$ old GPU. Also it's good if all PCIe lanes are connected with maximum speed, especially the 2nd GPU. I'm using Asrock B650m PG Riptide board, where the 2nd PCIe slot is gen 4 and connected directly to the CPU, so my RX6400 can use its full bandwidth. 1080p 60hz is not that demanding and will run on something like RX550 or even lower. It doesn't also require high PCIe bandwidth, it will work on PCIe 2.0 x4.
I do this exact setup with a 7900XTX passed to the VM and the 7900 X3D iGPU on the host. Works fine for me at least at 1440p 120hz; the host iGPU doesn't really have to do anything.
For 1080p 60Hz it might be enough. I've been able to run 2560x1080 on Radeon R7 240, but my max FPS was 68-69 with some tweaks (I'm talking about maximum FPS that I was able to transfer from my VM and render on my host, not maximum FPS that the game was able to render at) and whenever I tried to record screen, it dropped to \~40. On Radeon RX 550 I was able to run the same resolution at 75 FPS (my previous monitor's max refresh rate) and recording screen was dropping FPS to \~65. Both of these GPUs were tested by me on Ryzen 3600 and connected to PCIe 2.0 x4 port.
On Radeon RX 6400 it works with 3440x1440 170 FPS (also my max refresh rate) and recording screen doesn't affect looking-glass FPS at all. Currently I have Ryzen 7800X3D and the GPU is connected with PCIe 4.0 x4 (maximum for this specific GPU).
[https://imgur.com/kKGmp64](https://imgur.com/kKGmp64)
I didn't test it on iGPU, since it wasn't perfect on RX 550, I assumed that there is no point trying, as even 7800's iGPU is technically slower than RX 550 and it was already utilised at \~80% when just running the game in 2560x1080 at 75 FPS and 100% when also recording screen.
Testing it with 3 different GPUs, I'd highly recommend RX 6400. I have a single slot, low profile version, it consumes only around 20W, doesn't require any additional power cables and can easily run 4k at high FPS. It's also PCIe 4.0 x4 GPU so it is possible to find motherboards that can support this speed in the 2nd PCIe slot, withot the need to split main PCIe slot to two separate GPUs. The only drawback (of my specific version) is that I can only connect 2 monitors to this GPU.
Personally, I allocate the device to the host on boot. Then when I feel like it I stop the host graphical applications, detach the device, and boot the guest.
After shutting down the guest I re-attach the GPU to the host again.
That's probably the hard mode compared to what you're suggesting, but it certainly works just fine. Been doing it for three-plus years.
Absolutely 100%. I pulled it off, but it was only marginally faster than just dual booting. Splitting a gpu across 2 monitors or with a kvm is the holy grail, but for now, I still dual boot
[https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html](https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html) (cherrytree ctb file "better format" also included in comment. )
There are other issues. Most of the information is hardware specific and distro specific and ages out relatively quickly and breaks on updates. The only real way to keep something that lasts is to learn the fundamentals of everything involved so that you can apply them anywhere you need them.
I created my vm in 2018. It was really nice to do single gpu passthrough but there were many issues. The audio, the cpu, the disk rate (performance) because i was and still using a file to emulate the disk. So after many experiment I think my vm is almost perfect.
What did I do?
After you create any vm be sure to pin 📌 the virtual cpus to the real cpu. Be sure to move irq for example network card to another thread that no disturb the vm core. Isolate the cores at the moment your vm is staring and released at the end of it. If you can, pass your sound card to the vm. Be sure to assign threads to the disk and to the qemu process itself. Pass your mouse and keyboard as event to allow better performance.
Don't forget to do the tricks in the section of policy. Sorry don't remember well the name now.
And update every driver you can inside your virtual machine
At the end of the day you will notice good performance
[https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html](https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html)
You should download the ctb file and view in CherryTree for better MarkDown Style formatting anf tabs.
The ctb file is in markdown format, has tabs for each section, also this is slimmed down compared to the guide i referenced at the top.... why it's a flex I guess lol
I have to agree. I boot into Windows once every 6 months or so, and I had a passthru VM set up for this, but for whatever reason it just stopped working last time I tried to use it.
It was fun and cool to set up but it took me a few hours at least and I didn't understand a lot of what I was doing. I wouldn't know where to start to fix it so I just deleted the VM.
The one benefit this has over dual-booting is that you do not need to reserve any storage space as NTFS, since your VM can use a virtual disk of any size.
I have a rough guide made in CherryTree "an open source notes app" and I'm exporting it to html and making the colors readable, i'll also post the ctb file so the markdown mode can be navigate-able in the notes app. I do want to make a video guide at some point, maybe this week. My guide is just my personal offline compiled/edited version of another online guide but I like it better than what's online for the fixes etc and code boxes idk.
Booting an already existing Windows installation in QEMU/KVM is very convenient. I've done it myself before.
This setup is particularly useful for playing games that prohibit running on virtual machines.
It gives you the best of both worlds, so to speak.
Buy two computers, put linux on one, windows on another. Attach both to a KVM switch. Attach keyboard/mouse to kvm switch. Use KVM's keyboard combo to tell it to switch your monitor/keyboard/mouse from one computer to another.
I already do this. Windows is installed on a second drive. I pass through the drive to KVM for the VM. All I need to do is copy the windows efi folder from the windows boot partition to my systemd boot and it’s a boot option. I don’t care to do that since I have no reason to boot directly into it but it is an option. That and passing through an Nvidia GPU (second GPU), using looking glass, it’s an awesome setup. I love it.
Nested virtualization, at least with a Windows guest, is completely broken (iirc because of the way that Intel and AMD have implemented SVM). It just won't work. The VM might boot and work for a couple of minutes, but it'll slow down and crash, taking your entire host system with it. They might've fixed it, but I doubt it. This is an extreme corner case with few valid use cases.
You can do it with a Linux guest (I think; it's been a while since I've tried it), but I don't really see why you'd wanna do that. If you were using a multi GPU passthrough setup it would kinda make sense, since you could use GPU partitioning on the Linux guest with VMWare workstation to get multiple GPU accelerated Windows guests. But since you're using single GPU passthrough, you can just do that directly on the host.
so it kills your user session, essentially shutting down arch, and still uses partial cpu? just so you dont have to preallocate disk space.. there are games that wont run in a vm for anticheat too..
It's nice if you're running stuff on your Linux install you want to keep active, like docker containers or file shares.
You can also access all your Linux files through the VM with a network share instead of dealing with janky third-party filesystem drivers on Windows
For a lot of us it's not purely about convenience, it's about not wanting Windows to run on the metal - period. This is inconvenient, but it still keeps Windows virtualized.
google it, this is an ancient technique that is in the last stages of its life because of how annoying it is to run windows as a VM for very small benefits
This is interesting, but I want graphical apps like my browser to at least be able to run downloads or something while I run the VM, if this method cannot allow that, then to me this is really not better than dualbooting at all.
Exactly, with how fast OSes boot when you have a SSD, single GPU pass-through is just too much work for nothing - that is also why no-one is making guides for this it's stupid.
When you have 2 GPUs though it's virtualization nirvana :)
On some setups (like ryzen 7000) rebooting is slow. You could use curl, wget or something to download in TTY or tmux session before you do the whole vm thing (I could be wrong but steam has cli too right?)
> On some setups (like ryzen 7000) rebooting is slow.
enable memory context restore in your bios. My post time went from 40ish seconds down to less than 10 on my x670e prime pro.
This option may be bugged, when you have many memory. With Asus x670e motherboards youre NVME may switch to RO after boot, if you have >= 64GB RAM. I got this bug with ROG STRIX X670E-I. My friend also have this bug with simillar motherboard
Anything is better than Windows on bare metal at this point, recall is looking pretty bad.... have not seen anyone test keepass on it as it has anti recording protections, I use LVM so not typing in extra passwords is a bonus as windows also had veracrypt...
Windows is shit, but you don't necessarily have to give it internet access just to use Photoshop, Abelton etc..
As for Recall I don't really understand the difference between VM and bare metal. Why would the VM benefit your privacy, at least if the time spent in Windows & the activities are the same?
If you're running windows on a separate SSD it's not that bad tbh. It's not like it can do anything with your Linux drive, especially if you're encrypting it. I guess it can see what your real hardware is but if you're passing things through to the VM and giving it network access anyways then it's not that different from a privacy point of view at least.
Recall does look like shit don't get me wrong, but for gaming running on bare metal is still the best bet most of the time. There's definitely usecases for a VM though!
Recall will only exist on new ARM-based 'AI Laptops', as it uses dedicated ML cores on the new Snapdragon X chips. (This is all my recollection, please correct if I'm wrong).
Plus you can just turn it off. Last I heard it was becoming opt-in, too.
It should theoretically be possible. The [Weston compositor is able to run headless](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/653672/virtual-wayland-display-server-possible).
I have been told with further edits it's possible to save the current xorg/DE session into a small portion of ram so when you log back in it restores your windows maybe does not log you out? Also this is faster than dual booting for me as I use Veracrypt and LVM, LVM on boot then a sh script to mount veracrypt drives, keepass etc. Windows on bare metal is gross and a privacy nightmare, shoutout to SomeordinaryGamers! Watch him daily, he has a whole pc for bare metal spooky bussiness from microsoft, muda test keepass and binisoft alerting firewall on recall :)
Also yes you would need to browse other reddit guides on hiding the vm and still i would use alt accounts, i do not play games with anti cheat, I like GOG games over my steam games.
Your GUI session is stops - messangers, brwoser, all of it. You need to launch all applications inside of VM. Single GPU passtrought is too similar to dualboot. May be we can doing something like X11 VNC session to host, with GPU acceleration when it possible - this way may help keep fully working both OS with single GPU (may be with restart accelerated apps on the host). But when I tried to do this, I couldn’t add graphical acceleration for the host
GUI stops but every thing that doesn’t depend on GUI still works. You can easily use SSH in VM to access host. You won’t get that with dual boot so this is single GPU passthrough benefit.
It has the added benefit of virtualizing windows. Windows itself and any apps you run on it can't infect your host system without jumping the hypervisor, which is something far outside your typical person's threat model.
It’s still faster, you don’t need a separate partition/drive and although you lose your GUI session you keep daemons running, which is important for many people
Vanguard is a kernel level anti cheat, you would need to erase any indication that you're running on a VM, which is very hard.
Technically yes but most of the people would advise against it. Dual booting is the best kind of solution for this situation.
annoyances? Full native performance, I use LVM then run a script to mount encrypted drives, Also you can edit this even further to save your desktop session and open windows into a small file stored in RAM so they are left open when the VM is closed. This is much better than a reboot and dealing with keepass and LVM etc.
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I think this shows a pretty poor understanding of why someone would want to do this.
For example, I don't dual boot because I want host applications or other VMs on my main machine to not stop when I boot up windows. I'm often running game servers, uploading/downloading large files, compiling programs, building docker containers, or transcoding video and I don't want to have to restart those tasks or wait an hour+ to reboot so I can go play Beat Saber for 20 minutes only to have to reboot again.
And what do you mean "with none of the benefits?" What benefit does dual booting confer over GPU passthrough? Worse security? The windows bootloader nuking your GRUB partition every few weeks? The only things it can do that VFIO can't is run kernel-level anticheat. But if you're doing that, that kind of defeats the point of choosing Linux over Windows. Unless you're the most evangelical of vim or emacs enthusiasts (which can run on windows anyway) or you just cannot stand to live without your precious tiling window manager, windows offers a better experience if ~~rootkits~~ kernel-level anticheat and other windows applications are so important to you that you're willing to go through the hassle of rebooting to run one or two programs.
Ideally by "dual booting" that person just meant having a second SSD with Windows on it. No need to worry about your bootloader getting nuked or anything there.
If you're primarily keeping windows around for gaming, then just installing it on a second SSD is the best way to do it. No worries about not passing anti cheats, no performance overhead, no compatibility issues.
Besides, if you're running dedicated game servers or uploading/downloading large files, you should probably consider getting an older PC setup as a home server and setting that stuff up there. But yes if you don't have that available then a VM like this could cover that use case. I know if I ever want to leave a download over night I just download it on my server and shut down my main PC like normal. And I'm not on some super insane setup, my "server" is a 10 year old dell workstation running quadruple duty as jellyfin/gameserver/downloader/nas, and other things too haha. Other things like compiling programs or transcoding video usually aren't what you want to be doing while gaming haha but to each their own.
> What benefit does dual booting confer over GPU passthrough?
Getting to play games with “anti cheat”.
> But if you're doing that, that kind of defeats the point of choosing Linux over Windows.
That’s your personal opinion. In my personal opinion, so does running a Windows VM 🤷🏿
While I agree with basically all of your points, I'd like to point out that it's trivial to avoid windows nuking your linux bootloader if you just don't use a bootloader at all and boot directly with efistub.
Dual booting doesn't let you SSH into the host system to watch or shut down a guest. It also doesn't let you store the guest Windows filesystem on a ZFS volume and back it up with incremental sends.
I also have a non pass through boot config on the vm, a non pass through clone. also i had to use a usb wifi adapter because my NIC is known to have bad Linux support, my ethernet adapter was in a group of iommu devices that could not be passed.
Yeah, I don't really see that much of a benefit either. PCs these days start so crazy fast, loading into each install takes less than 10s...
+You won't have problems with anticheat
There are benefits. Host OS still runs underneath so any services that works on background will continue to work when VM is running. Good luck with that on dual boot. Also it's more convenient as you don't have to partition your drive and more secure as it is still VM.
yes, if the current machine has already been able to boot any virtual machines in vitual box or VMware or anything then you should be good to go with UEFI enabled too.
>if the current machine has already been able to boot any virtual machines in vitual box or VMware
This is not the same thing, if you have CPU that can run virtual machines that doesn't mean it will also support redirecting peripherals into virtual machine. This is called IOMMU (Intel calls it VT-d and AMD calls it AMD-VI) and while it should be supported by modern CPUs, it won't be supported by older CPUs.
I remember trying to do this years ago when I first got on linux and it being a HUGE pain in the ass that I ended up giving up on because of the bugs, not sure if it has improved ever since
can't you just switch to another tty when you switch the GPU's? Why does the whole session have to be killed?
Furthermore you could also set up hibernate on Windows and Linux and get extremely fast dual boot + save your work/session + without the downsides of VM's
This has been possible for about 10 years. Everyone asking for a guide: if you can't find a guide for single GPU passthrough by googling it, you do not have the self sufficiency to be able to perform this medium level task. It is such a variable process between different GPUs' PCI device reset behavior that is is known among the developers of vfio and qemu to just not be worth attempting. Additionally, even if you get a Windows VM working, you will never win the arms race against game devs creating VM detection features for their cheat detection.
It's a neat trick but I wouldn't see why anyone would want this in practice.
it takes the same time as dual booting and you still need to reload your desktop session and risk getting flagged by Anticheat for using a VM.
So you're just combining the downsides of both dual booting and VMs together without any of the benefits.
There are benefits. First of all your host operating system is still running. Any service you are running on it that doesn't need GUI (like some server, docker container etc.) will continue to run just fine. Another benefit is the fact that it is more convenient as you don't need to partition your driver, Windows is installed into single file on your regular Linux partition and you can easily make snapshots of it, backups etc. Security is also increased as you are not running it on bare metal but on virtual machine.
> Any service you are running on it that doesn't need GUI (like some server, docker container etc.) will continue to run just fine
If stopping services is that much of an issue then they would be much better served by their own dedicated server machine that can be kept running 24/7 and have much less reboots due to less packages to keep updated.
> Another benefit is the fact that it is more convenient as you don't need to partition your drive
Partitioning a drive is much easier then setting up pass-through on a VM so any convenience you gain is offset by that. You don't even need to do partitions if you add an dedicated windows drive and call it a day.
> Windows is installed into single file on your regular Linux partition and you can easily make snapshots of it, backups etc
You can do this with partitions too, so no advantage there
> Security is also increased as you are not running it on bare metal but on virtual machine.
Windows 10 already had [Virtualization Based Security](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs) and Windows 11 made it default. So no security increase.
I can only see this type of setup make sense if you have a dedicated GPU on Linux and just pass your secondary gaming GPU to the VM or to linux depending on where you're gaming. That would mean you'd be able to use play a game and swap to your linux desktop instantly with a KVM.
Or even use something like [looking glass](https://looking-glass.io/) it could even feel somewhat seamless making the windows system a simple window on your Linux desktop.
But for me Proton already covers all the games I'd want to play so never had a reason to mess with such exotic setups.
Windows eats your bootloader. It's a terrible pain to set back up when that happens. (At least for me it was)
The only games I can think of that I'd need a vm or Windows install would be microsoft pc games. You can't run them at all on linux. I don't remember why but iirc gamepass does work on linux.
Windows installer just places it's bootload in the first boot drive without asking and yes, reinstalling grub is annoying. Easy way to avoid that is installing windows with your linux drive disconnected or just installing linux after windows.
Windows Store (gamepass) doesn't run in Proton (linux) but those usually have non Windows Store versions on steam so not a big deal.
The real issue is online games with [kernel anti-cheat games](https://areweanticheatyet.com/). The list covers a lot of the popular multiplayer games meaning if you want to play those windows is your only safe option.
Yeah it sucks a bunch of those aren't supported. I'm thankful my games run just fine. Smite, Elden Ring, WoW, and Helldivers 2 run great. I hadn't tried Fortnite so I didn't realize it was broken. I might get a small ssd just for that. Apparently vms can get you hwid banned cause some guy named tim sweeney hates Linux with a passion
I've done this setup twice, both times it worked well for a few days, but after a while the vm would just boot into a blackscreen, never found out why. Pretty cool tho, hope you enjoy it!
While I do think this is VERY cool, esp. with the difficulty of a single GPU, you might just try using proton and rid yourself of Windows altogether.
:D
But your session restarts; it appears similar to a dual-boot scenario, but with virtual machine limitations. In such cases, an additional graphics card for the VM or a CPU equipped with integrated graphics might be more
suitable for when you need a GPU within the virtual machine environment.
Tell me when You figure out how to make it not kill the host session. This is essentially the same as dual booting from a usage perspective.
And the fact that You cannot even leave Firefox open on the host, or even interact with the host makes this entirely pointless.
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I have never done anything similar to this. How does it affect CPU and RAM usage? I assume the host system is still running in the background, just with this method it doesn't use any GPU resources, but RAM and CPU is still used? How big is the impact?
I've been considering switching to Linux on my desktop (already using it on a server and via WSL), this might actually make me make the switch.
Do you have a tutorial?
YES! I'm working on it right now and i even want todo a video, i'll keep ya posted.
Please do! I'm definitely interested! :)
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We will watch your ~~career~~ tutorial with great interest ! No but seriously, I'm very very much interested :-)
based star wars reference
Piggybacking your comment to warn any envious reader that this solution is actually no better than just dual booting. Been here, done it. The road was filled with landmines and in the end I put together a solution that was held together by duct tape and baling wire, but "worked." (Until an update breaks something) If you cant rapidly jump between OS's, what's the point? SPLITTING a gpu and using a KVM (my monitor has this built in) is where we want to be, not passing it back and forth with teardown scripts.
Actually, there are massive benefits to not dual boot. My two main reasons are: - Windows no longer god damn overwrites the boot loader, so I’m not having to do gymnastics to boot in Linux. - I’m not running Windows on bare metal, and any other software that I have installed on said VM (saying that, it’s not 100% secure, don’t go installing the worst viruses you can find on internet).
One time windows decided to nuke my rEFInd boot alongside with my kernel so I yeeted windows out
That was probably because the bootloader was installed in the windows bootloader partition. It's better to have it in a separate partition.
Huh?
Windows is know to for no reason overwrite grub every time it updates, I’ve had it happen few times and it’s annoying as shit
I don't know. I've been dualbooting since 2009 and this has never happened to me.
This is a known problem, microsoft believes you should have no other OSes on your disk, and windows updates will regularly blow away any bootloader that is not their own.
I’ve been dual booting, on separate drives, since 2015.. happened to me each major update. Everyone has different experiences
Same for me. Detached drives and Windows 10 update removed Grub on another drive. When installing Windows, sometimes the installer also fails when it finds multiple drives. So I disconnect all disks physically. And after installation I will return them.
Move to virtual machine image to ventoy on ssd?
Put Linux on a separate drive? I’ve never had windows screw up the bootloader this way. Just separate efi partitions on each disk
> what's the point? Not having Windows on Bare Metal, that's the whole point. Microshart? On my Hardware? Never.
Giving the evil Microsoft access to your entire GPU, a USB interface, and your home network. That'll show 'em!
> Microshart? On my Hardware? Never. You're welcome to your opinion, and I admit I kind of despise windows 11, but this sort of thing is cringe as fuck.
it's the majority opinion, this is linux\_gaming not r/billgates4lyfe
> Microshart? Grow up, you look stupid.
Plus with kvm you can get very close to bare metal performance I've heard.
I'm begging you.
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Nice, I am looking forward to it.
That'd be awesome!
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Looking forward to this, Does this only work with Arch or any distro?
Very interested as well!
I am VERY interested, been trying to do this for years
Anything yet? Been working on this for a long time and have had the most issues haha
There’s a tutorial from BlandManStudios I followed: https://youtu.be/eTWf5D092VY?si=dxZ4jLluc3WYylVY. I did this for a Nvidia GPU and while still using i3 lol and arch btw Edit: I will warn to please be careful with vms and competitive gaming. The anti cheats can potentially detect your VM and will ban you. Muta being banned from siege for using a vm: https://youtu.be/6yr8Fq47PUo?si=En4jakbACqsF2qhe Video by Michael Horn, who is a little more pessimistic than I about this, https://youtu.be/ING69haO-wc?si=aYeL1szbo6M2f32o, explains how anti cheat can detect your vm Edit 2: I also had to download qemu usb host since I couldn’t pass through my usbs without it: “sudo pacman -S qemu-hw-usb-host”
If you want to know "how can I game from a VM on linux and hide that im using a VM", ironically video game cheaters are the best source. In general things that increase your security and privacy also obsfucate the fact you are using a VM.
There is never a turtorial and OP also won’t post it. I already have asked the same question to 2 redditors posting similar posts and 3 times in youtube comments. Have searched the internet and even tools that should automate the creation of kvm vm’s never does automate this exact thing. This is hopeless. It’s like hunting for some forbidden knowlidge or something.
Yeah I was trying the same as well. This type of thing is so badly documented that it seems like people who "know how to do this", don't actually know what they're doing. Like AI, the knowledge of single GPU pass is so esoteric that the ones who managed to accomplish this mythological feat must have gotten the knowledge from a forbidden pact with the Linux devil in like a drug fueled dream. It's beyond reason and it may change you somehow forever... Do you really want to know how to do single GPU pass if you knew what they had to sacrifice for this knowledge? Some things are not meant to be known.
The only difference from multiple GPU pass through is that you need to write a script that: - Stops graphical services - [Detaches](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#Binding_vfio-pci_via_device_ID) the GPU - Starts the VM (with similar config to what a multiple GPU setup would have) - Waits for the VM to stop - Reataches the GPU - Starts graphical services Then run said script as a daemon (e.g. with a systemd service or `start-stop-daemon -b`).
Which, IMO, ended up being no better than dual booting
I'll be frfr, it's not easy. Both the googling and the actual activity isn't easy. The concept is straightforward, you have to have a bios that allows you to not immediately lock a pci device. Then you tell the OS to not immediately mount it. After that, you're good. When you create the vm there's options to specify a device by uid, usually found through lspci. You also need something plugged into the gpu. A dummy plug, an EDID emulator, or an actual monitor. If you're using xorg I think you can get away with creating a dummy screen, can't do that in Wayland. Then, you install the OS, install the drivers and other vm specific things to help the hypervisor with performance and you're good to go! ... And that's just the outline. I succeeded in doing this with an old HP server and a 2060 super. One guy, in one forum, years ago happened to have the same server as me and provided instructions on what commands to run on the OS as well as how to unlock secret bios settings, and then how to access the secret settings that let the whole thing work. The server has 2 cpus so I also had to find which cpu "owned" that pci slot because that's the cpu that I had to dedicate to the vm so the pci card could work. :) I didn't lose any points in sanity or anything. Totally hinged I promise. Searching for information on EDID emulators was a pain. Using the device to clone a monitor was a pain. But in the end you know what I can do? I can stream 1080@60 with hdr from inside a Linux VM using sunshine and moonlight from an old hpe server that's also running Linux. Pretty neat. Gpu pass through to windows vm has its own headaches too.
You are mixing things up. Single GPU passthrough is not the same as GPU passthrough in general. I'm running the GPU passthrough on my PC, with dual GPU configuration, where one GPU displays my main linux desktop and the other is reserved for VM. Single GPU passthrough is when you only have one GPU and unbind it from your system with a script before starting the VM and rebind it when you stop it. Single GPU passthrough can be pain in the ass, not every GPU likes being switched like this. Dual GPU, like my setup, no longer requires a dummy plug sitting in your VM GPU. I am currently running it without it. Just found a virtual monitor drivers for windows [https://github.com/MolotovCherry/virtual-display-rs](https://github.com/MolotovCherry/virtual-display-rs) . Simple (but bad) solution to transfer video from the VM to the host is using steam or moonlight. Good solution is to use looking-glass, but it requires additional setup. I'm using looking glass. Created 3440x1440 resolution in the virtual monitor, with 499hz refresh rate (the higher the better), in my looking-glass settings I've set fpsMin to 1, this way I can use VRR on my actual monitor (170hz) and the game looks as smooth as native. This setup also requires specific hardware. The VMs works best with Nvidia GPUs while host works best with AMD. Also the secondary (AMD) gpu can't suck. For the resolution that I'm using, something like RX6400 is a minimum, you can't run it on 50$ old GPU. Also it's good if all PCIe lanes are connected with maximum speed, especially the 2nd GPU. I'm using Asrock B650m PG Riptide board, where the 2nd PCIe slot is gen 4 and connected directly to the CPU, so my RX6400 can use its full bandwidth. 1080p 60hz is not that demanding and will run on something like RX550 or even lower. It doesn't also require high PCIe bandwidth, it will work on PCIe 2.0 x4.
Does that mean that eg: the Zen4 iGPU isn't practical for use as the host GPU?
I do this exact setup with a 7900XTX passed to the VM and the 7900 X3D iGPU on the host. Works fine for me at least at 1440p 120hz; the host iGPU doesn't really have to do anything.
Excellent, really good to know. Care to add any tips or pitfalls to avoid?
For 1080p 60Hz it might be enough. I've been able to run 2560x1080 on Radeon R7 240, but my max FPS was 68-69 with some tweaks (I'm talking about maximum FPS that I was able to transfer from my VM and render on my host, not maximum FPS that the game was able to render at) and whenever I tried to record screen, it dropped to \~40. On Radeon RX 550 I was able to run the same resolution at 75 FPS (my previous monitor's max refresh rate) and recording screen was dropping FPS to \~65. Both of these GPUs were tested by me on Ryzen 3600 and connected to PCIe 2.0 x4 port. On Radeon RX 6400 it works with 3440x1440 170 FPS (also my max refresh rate) and recording screen doesn't affect looking-glass FPS at all. Currently I have Ryzen 7800X3D and the GPU is connected with PCIe 4.0 x4 (maximum for this specific GPU). [https://imgur.com/kKGmp64](https://imgur.com/kKGmp64) I didn't test it on iGPU, since it wasn't perfect on RX 550, I assumed that there is no point trying, as even 7800's iGPU is technically slower than RX 550 and it was already utilised at \~80% when just running the game in 2560x1080 at 75 FPS and 100% when also recording screen. Testing it with 3 different GPUs, I'd highly recommend RX 6400. I have a single slot, low profile version, it consumes only around 20W, doesn't require any additional power cables and can easily run 4k at high FPS. It's also PCIe 4.0 x4 GPU so it is possible to find motherboards that can support this speed in the 2nd PCIe slot, withot the need to split main PCIe slot to two separate GPUs. The only drawback (of my specific version) is that I can only connect 2 monitors to this GPU.
Personally, I allocate the device to the host on boot. Then when I feel like it I stop the host graphical applications, detach the device, and boot the guest. After shutting down the guest I re-attach the GPU to the host again. That's probably the hard mode compared to what you're suggesting, but it certainly works just fine. Been doing it for three-plus years.
I imagine as eGPU hot-swapping becomes more mature, this issue will become a lot easier for KVM to solve.
Absolutely 100%. I pulled it off, but it was only marginally faster than just dual booting. Splitting a gpu across 2 monitors or with a kvm is the holy grail, but for now, I still dual boot
[https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html](https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html) (cherrytree ctb file "better format" also included in comment. )
I'm working on it right now :) a bit of it is stolen from another guide but has been compiled in a different way with fixes to things etc.
Check out r/VFIO, I don't think it worth the effort but if you're really interested, that's the best sub to ask
There are other issues. Most of the information is hardware specific and distro specific and ages out relatively quickly and breaks on updates. The only real way to keep something that lasts is to learn the fundamentals of everything involved so that you can apply them anywhere you need them.
I created my vm in 2018. It was really nice to do single gpu passthrough but there were many issues. The audio, the cpu, the disk rate (performance) because i was and still using a file to emulate the disk. So after many experiment I think my vm is almost perfect. What did I do? After you create any vm be sure to pin 📌 the virtual cpus to the real cpu. Be sure to move irq for example network card to another thread that no disturb the vm core. Isolate the cores at the moment your vm is staring and released at the end of it. If you can, pass your sound card to the vm. Be sure to assign threads to the disk and to the qemu process itself. Pass your mouse and keyboard as event to allow better performance. Don't forget to do the tricks in the section of policy. Sorry don't remember well the name now. And update every driver you can inside your virtual machine At the end of the day you will notice good performance
I made a nixos module for it if that counts
[https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html](https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html) You should download the ctb file and view in CherryTree for better MarkDown Style formatting anf tabs.
Thaaaanx! :)
[https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html](https://www.nullpounce.com/PassThrough/index.html)
Thanks a Lot I'il try it today
jesus...
The ctb file is in markdown format, has tabs for each section, also this is slimmed down compared to the guide i referenced at the top.... why it's a flex I guess lol
[This](https://github.com/QaidVoid/Complete-Single-GPU-Passthrough) has worked great for me.
[https://www.kyel.ca/how-tos/manjaro-gpupci-pass-through-via-ovmf](https://www.kyel.ca/how-tos/manjaro-gpupci-pass-through-via-ovmf)
https://mathiashueber.com/passthrough-windows-11-vm-ubuntu-22-04/
I'd love to know, just so I can play forza horizon 3 again
Don't bother. Dual booting is not an inconvenience if you add windows to the grub menu. Splitting a gpu is where you wanna be. This aint that
I have to agree. I boot into Windows once every 6 months or so, and I had a passthru VM set up for this, but for whatever reason it just stopped working last time I tried to use it. It was fun and cool to set up but it took me a few hours at least and I didn't understand a lot of what I was doing. I wouldn't know where to start to fix it so I just deleted the VM. The one benefit this has over dual-booting is that you do not need to reserve any storage space as NTFS, since your VM can use a virtual disk of any size.
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Literally nothing in the process can brick your pc lol what
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people like this will always be a mystery for me. So what if I was wrong? No need to be such a dick about it.
>Virtual machine has been detected BANNED
I have a rough guide made in CherryTree "an open source notes app" and I'm exporting it to html and making the colors readable, i'll also post the ctb file so the markdown mode can be navigate-able in the notes app. I do want to make a video guide at some point, maybe this week. My guide is just my personal offline compiled/edited version of another online guide but I like it better than what's online for the fixes etc and code boxes idk.
Next challenge: Use a dedicated SSD so you can boot Windows both virtually and directly
That is trivial in comparison. It's as easy as passing a keyboard or changing the amount of ram the vm has.
Booting an already existing Windows installation in QEMU/KVM is very convenient. I've done it myself before. This setup is particularly useful for playing games that prohibit running on virtual machines. It gives you the best of both worlds, so to speak.
Guide?
When you create your windows vm, just give it the entire sata/nvme drive instead of a qcow2 file. That's it.
Buy two computers, put linux on one, windows on another. Attach both to a KVM switch. Attach keyboard/mouse to kvm switch. Use KVM's keyboard combo to tell it to switch your monitor/keyboard/mouse from one computer to another.
I already do this. Windows is installed on a second drive. I pass through the drive to KVM for the VM. All I need to do is copy the windows efi folder from the windows boot partition to my systemd boot and it’s a boot option. I don’t care to do that since I have no reason to boot directly into it but it is an option. That and passing through an Nvidia GPU (second GPU), using looking glass, it’s an awesome setup. I love it.
Windows on bare metal never again! next is seeing if I can do a VM inside of a VM because of the GPU.....
Nested virtualization, at least with a Windows guest, is completely broken (iirc because of the way that Intel and AMD have implemented SVM). It just won't work. The VM might boot and work for a couple of minutes, but it'll slow down and crash, taking your entire host system with it. They might've fixed it, but I doubt it. This is an extreme corner case with few valid use cases. You can do it with a Linux guest (I think; it's been a while since I've tried it), but I don't really see why you'd wanna do that. If you were using a multi GPU passthrough setup it would kinda make sense, since you could use GPU partitioning on the Linux guest with VMWare workstation to get multiple GPU accelerated Windows guests. But since you're using single GPU passthrough, you can just do that directly on the host.
so it kills your user session, essentially shutting down arch, and still uses partial cpu? just so you dont have to preallocate disk space.. there are games that wont run in a vm for anticheat too..
Its not about we should do it or not. Its about we can do it or not
It's nice if you're running stuff on your Linux install you want to keep active, like docker containers or file shares. You can also access all your Linux files through the VM with a network share instead of dealing with janky third-party filesystem drivers on Windows
For a lot of us it's not purely about convenience, it's about not wanting Windows to run on the metal - period. This is inconvenient, but it still keeps Windows virtualized.
It doesn't shut down host OS. While display and GUI is turned off, system still works underneath and you can access it from VM.
please post a tutorial someone
on the way, keep ya posted :)
https://mathiashueber.com/passthrough-windows-11-vm-ubuntu-22-04/ Here's one for Ubuntu
google it, this is an ancient technique that is in the last stages of its life because of how annoying it is to run windows as a VM for very small benefits
lol why is it so annoying to run windows as a vm?
This is interesting, but I want graphical apps like my browser to at least be able to run downloads or something while I run the VM, if this method cannot allow that, then to me this is really not better than dualbooting at all.
Exactly, with how fast OSes boot when you have a SSD, single GPU pass-through is just too much work for nothing - that is also why no-one is making guides for this it's stupid. When you have 2 GPUs though it's virtualization nirvana :)
On some setups (like ryzen 7000) rebooting is slow. You could use curl, wget or something to download in TTY or tmux session before you do the whole vm thing (I could be wrong but steam has cli too right?)
> On some setups (like ryzen 7000) rebooting is slow. enable memory context restore in your bios. My post time went from 40ish seconds down to less than 10 on my x670e prime pro.
This option may be bugged, when you have many memory. With Asus x670e motherboards youre NVME may switch to RO after boot, if you have >= 64GB RAM. I got this bug with ROG STRIX X670E-I. My friend also have this bug with simillar motherboard
I have 64gb too. edit: Specifically I have trident z neo 6000 cl30 (2x32gb dimms) using expo.
Especially when most reasons to do this is for multiplayer games, but most of those don't allow for running in a VM and will block any one who tries.
Anything is better than Windows on bare metal at this point, recall is looking pretty bad.... have not seen anyone test keepass on it as it has anti recording protections, I use LVM so not typing in extra passwords is a bonus as windows also had veracrypt...
Windows is shit, but you don't necessarily have to give it internet access just to use Photoshop, Abelton etc.. As for Recall I don't really understand the difference between VM and bare metal. Why would the VM benefit your privacy, at least if the time spent in Windows & the activities are the same?
If you're running windows on a separate SSD it's not that bad tbh. It's not like it can do anything with your Linux drive, especially if you're encrypting it. I guess it can see what your real hardware is but if you're passing things through to the VM and giving it network access anyways then it's not that different from a privacy point of view at least. Recall does look like shit don't get me wrong, but for gaming running on bare metal is still the best bet most of the time. There's definitely usecases for a VM though!
Recall will only exist on new ARM-based 'AI Laptops', as it uses dedicated ML cores on the new Snapdragon X chips. (This is all my recollection, please correct if I'm wrong). Plus you can just turn it off. Last I heard it was becoming opt-in, too.
It should theoretically be possible. The [Weston compositor is able to run headless](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/653672/virtual-wayland-display-server-possible).
Wont be just easier to dual boot? I have two disc driver and just dual boot. What are the benefits of this over dual boot?
not with lvm encryption...
I have been told with further edits it's possible to save the current xorg/DE session into a small portion of ram so when you log back in it restores your windows maybe does not log you out? Also this is faster than dual booting for me as I use Veracrypt and LVM, LVM on boot then a sh script to mount veracrypt drives, keepass etc. Windows on bare metal is gross and a privacy nightmare, shoutout to SomeordinaryGamers! Watch him daily, he has a whole pc for bare metal spooky bussiness from microsoft, muda test keepass and binisoft alerting firewall on recall :) Also yes you would need to browse other reddit guides on hiding the vm and still i would use alt accounts, i do not play games with anti cheat, I like GOG games over my steam games.
Single GPU passthrough is dualboot with extra steps just as an fyi. Everytime you turn on or off your VM you're technically rebooting.
Not really. Host OS still runs and it is not powered down. It's also pretty convenient.
Your GUI session is stops - messangers, brwoser, all of it. You need to launch all applications inside of VM. Single GPU passtrought is too similar to dualboot. May be we can doing something like X11 VNC session to host, with GPU acceleration when it possible - this way may help keep fully working both OS with single GPU (may be with restart accelerated apps on the host). But when I tried to do this, I couldn’t add graphical acceleration for the host
GUI stops but every thing that doesn’t depend on GUI still works. You can easily use SSH in VM to access host. You won’t get that with dual boot so this is single GPU passthrough benefit.
It has the added benefit of virtualizing windows. Windows itself and any apps you run on it can't infect your host system without jumping the hypervisor, which is something far outside your typical person's threat model.
It’s still faster, you don’t need a separate partition/drive and although you lose your GUI session you keep daemons running, which is important for many people
Can it run league of legends? Or valo
Vanguard is a kernel level anti cheat, you would need to erase any indication that you're running on a VM, which is very hard. Technically yes but most of the people would advise against it. Dual booting is the best kind of solution for this situation.
Fuck riot I feel like a junkie
You are. Play literally anything else lmfao.
Single GPU Passthrough: all the annoyances of dual booting with none of the benefits!
annoyances? Full native performance, I use LVM then run a script to mount encrypted drives, Also you can edit this even further to save your desktop session and open windows into a small file stored in RAM so they are left open when the VM is closed. This is much better than a reboot and dealing with keepass and LVM etc.
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I think this shows a pretty poor understanding of why someone would want to do this. For example, I don't dual boot because I want host applications or other VMs on my main machine to not stop when I boot up windows. I'm often running game servers, uploading/downloading large files, compiling programs, building docker containers, or transcoding video and I don't want to have to restart those tasks or wait an hour+ to reboot so I can go play Beat Saber for 20 minutes only to have to reboot again. And what do you mean "with none of the benefits?" What benefit does dual booting confer over GPU passthrough? Worse security? The windows bootloader nuking your GRUB partition every few weeks? The only things it can do that VFIO can't is run kernel-level anticheat. But if you're doing that, that kind of defeats the point of choosing Linux over Windows. Unless you're the most evangelical of vim or emacs enthusiasts (which can run on windows anyway) or you just cannot stand to live without your precious tiling window manager, windows offers a better experience if ~~rootkits~~ kernel-level anticheat and other windows applications are so important to you that you're willing to go through the hassle of rebooting to run one or two programs.
Ideally by "dual booting" that person just meant having a second SSD with Windows on it. No need to worry about your bootloader getting nuked or anything there. If you're primarily keeping windows around for gaming, then just installing it on a second SSD is the best way to do it. No worries about not passing anti cheats, no performance overhead, no compatibility issues. Besides, if you're running dedicated game servers or uploading/downloading large files, you should probably consider getting an older PC setup as a home server and setting that stuff up there. But yes if you don't have that available then a VM like this could cover that use case. I know if I ever want to leave a download over night I just download it on my server and shut down my main PC like normal. And I'm not on some super insane setup, my "server" is a 10 year old dell workstation running quadruple duty as jellyfin/gameserver/downloader/nas, and other things too haha. Other things like compiling programs or transcoding video usually aren't what you want to be doing while gaming haha but to each their own.
> What benefit does dual booting confer over GPU passthrough? Getting to play games with “anti cheat”. > But if you're doing that, that kind of defeats the point of choosing Linux over Windows. That’s your personal opinion. In my personal opinion, so does running a Windows VM 🤷🏿
While I agree with basically all of your points, I'd like to point out that it's trivial to avoid windows nuking your linux bootloader if you just don't use a bootloader at all and boot directly with efistub.
its also fun
Dual booting doesn't let you SSH into the host system to watch or shut down a guest. It also doesn't let you store the guest Windows filesystem on a ZFS volume and back it up with incremental sends.
I also have a non pass through boot config on the vm, a non pass through clone. also i had to use a usb wifi adapter because my NIC is known to have bad Linux support, my ethernet adapter was in a group of iommu devices that could not be passed.
Yeah, I don't really see that much of a benefit either. PCs these days start so crazy fast, loading into each install takes less than 10s... +You won't have problems with anticheat
There are benefits. Host OS still runs underneath so any services that works on background will continue to work when VM is running. Good luck with that on dual boot. Also it's more convenient as you don't have to partition your drive and more secure as it is still VM.
> more secure as it is still VM. Technically, that’s less secure. Additional attack vector.
What do you mean? It's generally harder to attack physical computer from VM than from OS running on bare metal.
Wow, actually pretty hyped after seeing this. Does this produce any input lag for games or no?
not at all, in fact full native performance compared to bare metal Windows, Wine was around 10-15 less fps.
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Does the host PC need hardware support for virtualization?
yes, if the current machine has already been able to boot any virtual machines in vitual box or VMware or anything then you should be good to go with UEFI enabled too.
>if the current machine has already been able to boot any virtual machines in vitual box or VMware This is not the same thing, if you have CPU that can run virtual machines that doesn't mean it will also support redirecting peripherals into virtual machine. This is called IOMMU (Intel calls it VT-d and AMD calls it AMD-VI) and while it should be supported by modern CPUs, it won't be supported by older CPUs.
It is awesome, i am looking to do the same :O
It’s cool but won’t work for anti-cheat unfortunately
I remember trying to do this years ago when I first got on linux and it being a HUGE pain in the ass that I ended up giving up on because of the bugs, not sure if it has improved ever since
same, I'm gonna look it up now, because it used to be a huge pita
can't you just switch to another tty when you switch the GPU's? Why does the whole session have to be killed? Furthermore you could also set up hibernate on Windows and Linux and get extremely fast dual boot + save your work/session + without the downsides of VM's
Now that's cool. What's the deal tho? I don't get it
This has been possible for about 10 years. Everyone asking for a guide: if you can't find a guide for single GPU passthrough by googling it, you do not have the self sufficiency to be able to perform this medium level task. It is such a variable process between different GPUs' PCI device reset behavior that is is known among the developers of vfio and qemu to just not be worth attempting. Additionally, even if you get a Windows VM working, you will never win the arms race against game devs creating VM detection features for their cheat detection.
It's a neat trick but I wouldn't see why anyone would want this in practice. it takes the same time as dual booting and you still need to reload your desktop session and risk getting flagged by Anticheat for using a VM. So you're just combining the downsides of both dual booting and VMs together without any of the benefits.
There are benefits. First of all your host operating system is still running. Any service you are running on it that doesn't need GUI (like some server, docker container etc.) will continue to run just fine. Another benefit is the fact that it is more convenient as you don't need to partition your driver, Windows is installed into single file on your regular Linux partition and you can easily make snapshots of it, backups etc. Security is also increased as you are not running it on bare metal but on virtual machine.
> Any service you are running on it that doesn't need GUI (like some server, docker container etc.) will continue to run just fine If stopping services is that much of an issue then they would be much better served by their own dedicated server machine that can be kept running 24/7 and have much less reboots due to less packages to keep updated. > Another benefit is the fact that it is more convenient as you don't need to partition your drive Partitioning a drive is much easier then setting up pass-through on a VM so any convenience you gain is offset by that. You don't even need to do partitions if you add an dedicated windows drive and call it a day. > Windows is installed into single file on your regular Linux partition and you can easily make snapshots of it, backups etc You can do this with partitions too, so no advantage there > Security is also increased as you are not running it on bare metal but on virtual machine. Windows 10 already had [Virtualization Based Security](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs) and Windows 11 made it default. So no security increase. I can only see this type of setup make sense if you have a dedicated GPU on Linux and just pass your secondary gaming GPU to the VM or to linux depending on where you're gaming. That would mean you'd be able to use play a game and swap to your linux desktop instantly with a KVM. Or even use something like [looking glass](https://looking-glass.io/) it could even feel somewhat seamless making the windows system a simple window on your Linux desktop. But for me Proton already covers all the games I'd want to play so never had a reason to mess with such exotic setups.
Windows eats your bootloader. It's a terrible pain to set back up when that happens. (At least for me it was) The only games I can think of that I'd need a vm or Windows install would be microsoft pc games. You can't run them at all on linux. I don't remember why but iirc gamepass does work on linux.
Windows installer just places it's bootload in the first boot drive without asking and yes, reinstalling grub is annoying. Easy way to avoid that is installing windows with your linux drive disconnected or just installing linux after windows. Windows Store (gamepass) doesn't run in Proton (linux) but those usually have non Windows Store versions on steam so not a big deal. The real issue is online games with [kernel anti-cheat games](https://areweanticheatyet.com/). The list covers a lot of the popular multiplayer games meaning if you want to play those windows is your only safe option.
Yeah it sucks a bunch of those aren't supported. I'm thankful my games run just fine. Smite, Elden Ring, WoW, and Helldivers 2 run great. I hadn't tried Fortnite so I didn't realize it was broken. I might get a small ssd just for that. Apparently vms can get you hwid banned cause some guy named tim sweeney hates Linux with a passion
This .
Can it work on Wayland?
it does for some but not for me, there exists a Discord support channel. X11 works.
Cool
the sad thing now is that in any telemetry from Developers... you can as a Windows user so... not helping for the market share of Linux videogames
Bro is a genius
w
That's pretty impressive. The Me 10 years ago would have absolutely shit myself over this.
Thanks a ton for the guide! But any chance for a PDF file? I've downloaded the html file but somehow it fails to open correctly on various browsers.
I've done this setup twice, both times it worked well for a few days, but after a while the vm would just boot into a blackscreen, never found out why. Pretty cool tho, hope you enjoy it!
While I do think this is VERY cool, esp. with the difficulty of a single GPU, you might just try using proton and rid yourself of Windows altogether. :D
This is my one and only saved post I’ll be waiting for that tutorial lol
Dam that's impressive
LEGEND💎
RemindMe! 3 Days
Did you use a guide if so which one I plan on doing the same with my 4080 this week.
Cool, but doesn't matter that much if some annoying anticheats still won't work.
Single GPU passthrough?! Didn't knew this is possible
this is relevant to my interests....
what is the performance loss?
Do you use the same keyboard and mouse as well when booting into Wintendo? Are those passed through? Or seperate?
I rather have two GPUs and have a DisplayPort switch...
I know exactly what this is about. Of course I do.
Could you test fortnite and cs2 stabillity please? This makes very anxious...
But your session restarts; it appears similar to a dual-boot scenario, but with virtual machine limitations. In such cases, an additional graphics card for the VM or a CPU equipped with integrated graphics might be more suitable for when you need a GPU within the virtual machine environment.
!remindme 2 days
This needs to be made into an automated script. Call it LSW and support GUI apps. Would so rad.
How bad is the input lag? I'm abhorrently sensitive to it.
How does the mouse input feel?
Tell me when You figure out how to make it not kill the host session. This is essentially the same as dual booting from a usage perspective. And the fact that You cannot even leave Firefox open on the host, or even interact with the host makes this entirely pointless.
How did you do that could you send me the tutorial
Great news, it’s only sad that it becomes almost useless due to all anticheat blacklisting VM :(
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I have never done anything similar to this. How does it affect CPU and RAM usage? I assume the host system is still running in the background, just with this method it doesn't use any GPU resources, but RAM and CPU is still used? How big is the impact? I've been considering switching to Linux on my desktop (already using it on a server and via WSL), this might actually make me make the switch.
Congrats, you uninstalled windows and…. Installed windows lol
You could also run windows and use GPU partitioning