Switch to KVM based virtualization such as gnome boxes or virtual manager
This. It is free, and good.
The best in the industry
What do you like about GNOME Boxes?
I've a very bad experience with GNOME boxes, both VMware and VirtualBox seem to outperform the thing and work better (drag and drop and resolution scaling, actual GPU acceleration).
It is simpler and runs as a local user
Better question is who is using VMware at all. QEMU+virt-manager on top.
Honestly, I was forced to use it for a project and then just stuck with it for its simplicity
Why?
If you don't need many features it's easier to quickly set up and create a vm than VirtualBox. Well until now anyway. I haven't tried the other alternatives mentioned here, they might be better in that aspect too.
If you want simple, GNOME Boxes is hard to beat.
Virtual box is slow and requires kernel modules just like VMware. Seems easier to use something native.
It's got really good hardware graphics acceleration.
So does KVM
I've never gotten KVM video acceleration for a Windows guest to work on either Intel or Nvidia GPUs with any kind of easy tooling (virt-manager, Boxes). Closest I've come is using Intel vGPUs but those panic the host kernel after a short while.
I just flipped the toggle and it worked. This is probably a "your millage will vary" moment.
Additionally GPU acceleration has received a lot of love recently as there has been a push for Foss VDI
If the feature never worked, it wouldn't be there! It's just rather unreliable in my experience, while VMWare seems to Just Work.
If I ever get new hardware or a new major kernel update, I'll try toggling the button again, but I totally get why people pick closed source tools in this case. Nothing that can't be fixed, just not something I have the time or skills for to fix.
+1 here, intel on laptop.
Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. I've never successfully turned on hardware acceleration when running Windows guests, and I don't think Gnome Boxes even exposes the option.
Specifically for Windows vms without a GPU passed to it, VMware tends to do a way better job at least in my testing
If you install the virtio drivers KVM based virtualization it will work way better. You can even copy and paste
It can be done, to some extent, but it's definitely not as easy as VMWare makes it. With Broadcom turning VMWare into shit I wish they'd just release the source code as AGPL and be done with it.
VMWare did something I've seen no other virtual machine software do: allow me to turn on Windows Aero on Windows 7 without registry hacks or PCIe passthrough.
The virtio tooling is amazing as an open source project, but when it comes to user experience, VMWare has always been better in my opinion. Still, I primarily run Linux VMs that don't need guest tooling, so I use virt-manager, but every so often I wish VMWare Player were open source because of how smooth it is in comparison to free software.
Yeah, Windows on KVM without GPU acceleration is not ideal. Also setting up a VM with all the bells and whistles like a shared folder, USB, printing is still easier on VMware than virt-manager. I've recently switched all my Windows VMs from VMware to KVM/virt-manager.
virt-manager for the win!
I had the same issue and was unable to find a solution.
I'd say switch to gnome-boxes or virt-managerif possible - they don't have this issue with Wayland and perform better than VMWare / Virtual Box anyway.
Interesting, I didn't know about virt-manager. I might try one of those, thanks for the suggestion.
I had to switch the computer where I needed VMware to an Xorg session. 🥹
Sadly that means the second screen not working properly
Fractional scaling is also a bit subpar.
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