I'm using Virtualbox 5.0.28 on Linux Mint as a host.
I have two guest systems I'm comparing:
- Kali Linux w. Kernel 4.6.4
- Linux Mint 17.3 w. Kernel 3.19.0-32
On both guests:
- Guest additions are installed.
- glxinfo seems to come up for both, showing 3D acceleration enabled.
- Gnome settings shows "Chromium" as a rendering engine(?)
- The kernel modules vboxvideo are loaded.
- Xorg.0.log shows that X11 loads the vboxvideo drivers.
- Both have 3d support enabled in VirtualBox settings and 128M of RAM for video.
but, Kali feels sluggish. E.g.,:
- When I take a terminal window and drag it around the screen, I can make the *host* CPU jump to 150% The same action on Mint barely tops 40% (and Window transparency is enabled).
- Keystrokes are occasionally lost on Kali, I have to s-l-o-w down my typing so as to be sure I'm typign correctly
- By comparison, a Mint guest *feels* native, scrolling is sharp, fast and keystrokes are never lost.
Note that in this window drag experiment, the CPU load on the guest doesn't increase, the load increases on the *host* which makes me think that it's a video acceleration issue.
A few places I'm stuck:
- How can I see if the desktop environments both support 3d acceleration? Is that even an issue?
- Does Virtualbox's lack of Guest support for 2d acceleration in Linux factor in?
- How can I get X.org to generate a new Xorg.0.log? (the date on the file is similar to install time)
But the key here is that with the 3d support apparently not being the problem, what else could be slowing down the guest in Virtualbox?
Asked by mgjk
(666 rep)
Dec 15, 2016, 05:12 PM