virtualbox.org

Guest Additions are installed, but its not running very well.

Reason is, that vboxvideo-Driver is not used.

I found this solution, now its working better:

http://www.typicaltips.com/2013/02/ubun ... ution.html

You might want to complain to Ubuntu about their worthless software 3D fallback. I doubt VirtualBox without GAs installed is the only environment where the fallback is used with such unsatisfactory results. Somehow every other desktop OS manages to be usable without hardware 3D...

I never understood this post in the first place. I managed to get the GAs installed and 3D working without following the above link. All that's needed is to purge the included VBox packages that are included 13.04 and install them from the VBox menu.

As far as the 3D fallback being useless, perhaps it runs better on hardware.

loukingjr wrote:As far as the 3D fallback being useless, perhaps it runs better on hardware.

It doesn't. It's just that the cases where the fallback would be used are less frequent.

michaln wrote:

loukingjr wrote:As far as the 3D fallback being useless, perhaps it runs better on hardware.

It doesn't. It's just that the cases where the fallback would be used are less frequent.

hmmm, not to belabor the point but it's hard to believe anything wouldn't run better/faster on hardware than in a VM. I'm not going to buy a PC to install Ubuntu on however just to check.

I'm sure it runs faster, but it not enough to be usable. Do a quick search and you'll find bug reports for non-virtualized environments.

The problem is that the software rendering fallback is horribly (unusably) slow. Yes, I'm sure on real hardware it runs faster than in a VM, but even if it were 2x faster it's still not nearly enough. It needs to be perhaps 10x if not 100x faster to be usable.

Not to mention that software rendering has a processor hit of around 30%. (virtual environment)

What I see happening here are distros using the software rendering fallback instead of having to develop 2D DEs. Shame really. Cinnamon helps and is available in most distors but it is only the main line in Mint.

All of that said just about any distro that uses Gnome has decided to go this route, so it is going to be an issue with virtual machines. Support for 3D will need to be available or it will be pointless to virtualize.

@ michaln I see. I'll take your word for it. Personally I think developers of most platforms just keep adding "features" that slow things down to appease novice users or to make them "user friendly" to the point of requiring the latest and greatest hardware just to run reasonably. I don't understand why they can't see not everyone can afford to purchase a new PC every year, not to mention desktop sales are down, and when their particular OS runs poorly on older hardware it will keep users from trying it again when they do buy something more current.

but I digress.