Re: [RFC] Unify KVM kernel-space and user-space code into a single project

Ingo Molnar
2010-03-18T17:02:23Z

* Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 6:38 PM, Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws> wrote:
> >>>> There are all kernel space projects, going through Xorg would be a
> >>>> horrible waste of performance for full-screen virtualization. It's fine
> >>>> for the windowed or networked case (and good as a compatibility
> >>>> fallback), but very much not fine for local desktop use.
> >>
> >> For the full-screen case (which is a very common mode of using a guest OS
> >> on the desktop) there's not much of window management needed. You need to
> >> save/restore as you switch in/out.
> >
> > I don't think I've ever used full-screen mode with my VMs and I use
> > virtualization on a daily basis.
> >
> > We hear very infrequently from users using full screen mode.
>
> Sorry for getting slightly off-topic but I find the above statement
> interesting.
>
> I don't use virtualization on daily basis but a working, fully integrated
> full-screen model with VirtualBox was the only reason I bothered to give VMs
> a second chance. From my point of view, the user experience of earlier
> versions (e.g. Parallels) was just too painful to live with.

That's the same i do, and that's what i'm hearing from other desktop users as
well.

The moment you work seriously in a guest OS you often want to switch to it
full-screen, to maximize screen real-estate and to reduce host GUI element
distractions. If it's just casual use of a single app then windowed mode
suffices (but in that case performance doesnt matter much to begin with).

I find the 'KVM mostly cares about the server, not about the desktop' attitude
expressed in this thread troubling.

> /me crawls back to his hole now...

/me should do that too - this discussion is not resulting in any positive
result so it has become rather pointless.

Ingo