virtualbox.org

loukingjr wrote: That might be the case if I even had Unity installed. What the screenshots show is Gnome Remix which is gnome-shell only. If it had to drop to 2D it would show so called Gnome Classic and would show "Applications Places" in the top panel. I'm kind of familiar with the point of the thread seeing I started it.

No, gnome-shell does the same as Unity. It will run in 3D but falls back to running on llvmpipe (i.e. software rendering) when accelerated graphics is not detected. Other than how slow it is, it is hard to tell the difference.

Run the following to see if you are using VB accelerated graphics, or llvmpipe:

apt-get install mesa-utils
glxinfo | grep renderer

If you see llvmpipe, or software rasterizer, etc in that output then you are not using VB accelerated (3D) graphics.

I would say that 12.10 is slower than most due to the heavy use of compiz which has never worked that great in vbox. 11.10 and 12.04 were acceptable but 12.10 is slow and that is just the way it is. Do your own test and install the compiz setting manager and turn off the animation and fading windows effect and see if it doesn't help.

See the known issue section and the 3D acceleration section in your manual and you will see that vbox has never gotten out of being experimental. Also reading the forum and bug tracker you will also see that there has been and continues to be an issue with 3D in vbox

Why ubuntu ever discontinued the unity 2D is beyond me and myself i have never been a gnome3 advocate.

Y E T I wrote:I would say that 12.10 is slower than most due to the heavy use of compiz which has never worked that great in vbox. 11.10 and 12.04 were acceptable but 12.10 is slow and that is just the way it is. Do your own test and install the compiz setting manager and turn off the animation and fading windows effect and see if it doesn't help.

See the known issue section and the 3D acceleration section in your manual and you will see that vbox has never gotten out of being experimental. Also reading the forum and bug tracker you will also see that there has been and continues to be an issue with 3D in vbox

Why ubuntu ever discontinued the unity 2D is beyond me and myself i have never been a gnome3 advocate.

what is interesting is Unity2D is in the Quantal repos. I didn't bother installing it but it's there.

bulletmark wrote: Run the following to see if you are using VB accelerated graphics, or llvmpipe:

apt-get install mesa-utils
glxinfo | grep renderer

If you see llvmpipe, or software rasterizer, etc in that output then you are not using VB accelerated (3D) graphics.

It appears you are correct. What I get is "OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301)"
Just to see what would happen in a Lubuntu 12.10 guest I added "vboxvideo" to /etc/modules and after rebooting it I still get the above string. So it looks like I'm not getting 3D acceleration in Lubuntu either.

edit: same thing with Kubuntu 12.10

makes me wonder if I've had 3D acceleration in any Linux guest.

loukingjr wrote: Just to see what would happen in a Lubuntu 12.10 guest I added "vboxvideo" to /etc/modules and after rebooting it I still get the above string. So it looks like I'm not getting 3D acceleration in Lubuntu either.

edit: same thing with Kubuntu 12.10

makes me wonder if I've had 3D acceleration in any Linux guest.

That's because it has nothing to do with any particular desktop flavor, nor Compiz/Unity, etc. The problem is that VB guest additions does not work with xorg 1.13 used in ubuntu 12.10. VB 3D acceleration has worked generally fine with previous versions of ubuntu (i.e. previous xorg) but we have been waiting until VB 4.2.2 to get support for the new xorg 1.13. The latest VB 4.2.2 guest additions nominally supports xorg 1.13 but clearly video acceleration is not working, or at least is very buggy. For me, manually adding vboxvideo module, with VB 3D acceleration enabled, does give 3D acceleration (renderer = Chromium), but it crashes/corrupts my guest very quickly. Before it crashes I can see it is accelerated, because windows drag around much quicker and more smoothly.

bulletmark wrote:
That's because it has nothing to do with any particular desktop flavor, nor Compiz/Unity, etc. The problem is that VB guest additions does not work with xorg 1.13 used in ubuntu 12.10. VB 3D acceleration has worked generally fine with previous versions of ubuntu (i.e. previous xorg) but we have been waiting until VB 4.2.2 to get support for the new xorg 1.13. The latest VB 4.2.2 guest additions nominally supports xorg 1.13 but clearly video acceleration is not working, or at least is very buggy. For me, manually adding vboxvideo module, with VB 3D acceleration enabled, does give 3D acceleration (renderer = Chromium), but it crashes/corrupts my guest very quickly. Before it crashes I can see it is accelerated, because windows drag around much quicker and more smoothly.

I understand what you are saying but why then does adding vboxvideo to /etc/modules not crash Lubuntu, Xubuntu or Kubuntu 12.10? Instead, it seems to do nothing at all. BTW, in Unity at least on my iMac, It never draws correctly at all with vboxvideo added and in Gnome-Shell it draws transparencies pixelated. I wonder what part of xorg 1.13 is supported in VB 4.2.2.

bulletmark
And what about video card and driver?
I have Nvidia GTX 560 with driver 304.43.
PS: Maybe problem is only with AMD RADEON videocards?

adasiko wrote:bulletmark
And what about video card and driver?
I have Nvidia GTX 560 with driver 304.43.
PS: Maybe problem is only with AMD RADEON videocards?

You may have a point. Despite the fact that the majority of Macs come with ATI/AMD graphics, VB seems to be Nvidia based which of course would be a reason 3D and or Compiz never really works very well on Mac hosts.

loukingjr wrote:VB seems to be Nvidia based

I'm confused... what's that supposed to mean?

michaln wrote:

loukingjr wrote:VB seems to be Nvidia based

I'm confused... what's that supposed to mean?

Well, what I have seen more than once in the forum is problems with AMD graphics. And I have also seen more than once people/moderators recommending getting the latest Nvidia drivers for the host to possibly solve a graphics issue. What I haven't seen are mentions of what to do if you happen to have AMD graphics on one's host. I just know I've been using VirtualBox since version '2 point something' on two different Macs and there has always been some kind of graphics issues with 3D and/or Compiz.

I don't think this has anything to do with the host graphics card. In fact, it has nothing to do with the particular host at all. I copied my Ubuntu 12.10 guest from my Ubuntu 12.04 host to my Mac running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and VB 4.2.2. I removed the vboxvideo module I had added, rebooted, reinstalled guest additions (i.e. from the Mac), and rebooted. Again I did not get accelerated graphics. I added vboxvideo to /etc/modules and rebooted. Then I got a very unstable guest, just like on my original ubuntu 12.04 host. I believe that the problem is that VB 4.2.2 simply does not cater for guest xorg 1.13 properly.

I think you will find that it has to do with the new mesa drivers that they are using with Ubuntu 12.10 and even Fedora 18
Both of them get really ticked off with the VBox video hardware acceleration and reverts to software rendering. Forcing the driver can and does cause guest to brutally abort. VBox seems to work fine with Xorg 1.13 due to the fact that it will actually allow resizing and full screen.

I found this ticket today https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11107

Ubuntu was so intent to get ride of unity 2d they wanted to get the ball rolling with the unity 3d desktop and make sure it work with any condition, thus the software rendering. Oh and yes they still have Unity 2D but it is a dummy package and I doubt you will be able to install it.

It seems we all agree 4.2.2 and Ubuntu 12.10 are not getting along. What I am still unclear about is why even after adding vboxvideo to /etc/modules, Lubuntu 12.10, Kubuntu 12.10 and Xubuntu 12.10 neither crash nor use 3D hardware acceleration. I'm not sure why I even brought any of this up seeing I don't care for either Unity or Gnome-Shell. l guess for now there is no way to get hardware acceleration working in any 12.10 'buntu.

But why it works for me?
I use 32 bit guest Ubuntu. I will try to install 64 bit guest...

adasiko wrote:But why it works for me?
I use 32 bit guest Ubuntu. I will try to install 64 bit guest...

I was using a 32bit guest.