I’ve got a reasonably pumped processor (Core 2 Quad) benching around 1/3rd of the best money can buy, 4GB RAM, yet I can’t seem to strike a Linux distro/virtualization combo that simply is responsive enough for typical development work.
For example, the cursor motion in IntelliJ IDEA is simply not consistent and responsive enough to move and edit accurately.
Flipping over to a running Firefox takes a few seconds, even switching between tabs in Firefox isn’t instant.
In the host O/S, Windows 7, app switches, tab switches etc everything happens instantly.
I’ve tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu 11.04. I’ve tried VirtualBox and VMWare. All had very different responses. None good enough.
I’ve played around with RAM settings etc and maybe there’s some config setting I missing. I’m not trying to find the cause here on SO, but I would just first like to know if I have my head in the clouds thinking I can develop on virtualized Linux at the speed I did in Windows?
The distros I tried, especially Ubuntu, looked like they’d been dumbed down for the general user. Do I need to find an older distro, or something a bit rawer? I only want a desktop to hold multiple windows, run apps from and look graphically pleasant. No bloatware or fancy effects (or LCD clocks ahhhh…)
Or does virtualization just require the ultimate in hardware? I’ve just switched over to Linux with very little knowledge of it and have no idea if it’s the virtualization, my machine or simply the distros I’ve tried.
Update
I fiddled around some more but as soon as a second app was on screen, response suffered. Also when the display was made to span two monitors, even a single app suffered. I will get some more RAM, even though I still had some physical memory left when running two apps.
I thought I’d give an XFCE distro a go (Xubuntu) and the thing flies, no response issues at all, plus I’m happy with it being minimal.
I work everyday on a Linux (Centos) VM running within VMWare Workstation on the following setups:
With those setups, I typically give the VM 2 of my 4 cores and 2-4G of RAM. You likely don’t need to give them that much. I use Eclipse as my IDE and run in Unity Mode most of the time without issue.
I’ve never had problems so I’m not certain that the suggestions below make any noticeable difference but try the follwing, which should help to increase the performance of your virtual machines:
Good luck!