Ubuntu bionic slow on VB, but fast (not slow) on VMWare Player

[steverueg]

I just installed Ubuntu Bionic (18.04.1) (Unity desktop) on both VB (5.2.18) and VMware Player (v14). I have Guest Additions on both VMs.

On VB, the %system is always about 20% (using $ sar) and all graphics interactions are super slow. Opening the Dash takes forever (~ 1min) and opening both LibreOffice Write and Calc take several minutes.

The same tasks on VMware Player are "fast" -- a sec or two. I can actually see the animation when opening the Dash in Player, but not VB.

I have 3D acceration enabled on both. I'm using 8Gb Ram on both. I assigned 4 "CPUs". My host is a Dell XPS i7.

Has anyone else been able to get Unity on VB to run 'acceptably' like it's a real machine? It feels like something with the graphics emulation, but I can't figure out what? (Xubuntnu runs acceptibly on VB, but not Unity.)

Steve

[steverueg]

And, yes, I checked /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test and it reprted "yes" for Unity 3D support for both VMs.

[steverueg]

The problem seems to be gnome-shell. The 20% system-state is really 1 CPU at 100% system wait state. When I kill a gnome-shell, that goes away -- for a while. I know gnome-shell is very 3-D graphics intenstive; but VMware doesn't seem to have this problem. I'd rather use VB, but I can't under these circumstances.

[andyp73]

I'm using 8Gb Ram on both. I assigned 4 "CPUs".

Does your host actually have more than 4 cores (not threads) to be able to assign that many to the guest? Likewise, when the VM is started is there 8.0GB RAM free? The VBox.log file from the guest will give the answers to that, along with anything else in the configuration that may be causing the problem.

You haven't said what your host is but there was a thread here relating to a Windows host that gave poor performance with VirtualBox compared to VMWare due to Windows spectre fixes.

-Andy.

[steverueg]

Thanks for helping, Andy, But I think I found my answer.

I was stuck because I thought Ubuntu was using Unity GUI still. Nope. Not sure when, but Ubuntu Desktop is now using Gnome. Once I tracked the system wait states to gnome-shell I had new info.

There is a known issue with Oracle Virtualbox + 3D Accerlation + Gnome UI. This post seems very complete: (bitly) 2Cm6Yf8

The solution are to change any one of the above factors: use VMWare, turn off 3D Acceration, or use a different UI like Xubuntu or Lubuntu.

I can accept those solution options. I've tested all 3 of them, and they do indeed solve the issue with massive "unworkable" UI delays.

[ChipMcK]

where have you been ????

Ubuntu 17.10: return of the GNOME