Currently running Linux Mint and have a few problems such as green screen crashes, monitors constantly changing and moving apps (three monitors on an AMD 5700 XT), Cinnamon panels not showing apps on monitors, USB frequently dropping basic devices (mouse, keyboard, sound).
Looking to hop to a Fedora Atomic variant likely Sway, which is Wayland-only (with xWayland I believe) but the OS runs Toolbox and Podman. I’m looking to install Incus using the Atomic Layered method and running alongside Podman but will uninstall Podman and Toolbox if necessary.
The aim on this box is to create as close to seemless multi desktop experience with isolated environments including Windows, WINE, Network VM (Netlab) and some Dev environments.
Box is a Supermicro Epyc Rome (H12SSL-i server motherboard with 32-core CPU) with 384GB ECC RAM.
The GUI experience is an unknown factor and I am interested in sharing the GPU 3D/2D acceleration across all the environments. Kind of like a host-only VDI solution using native display rendering technologies rather than a network technology like RDP/VNC and curious if the Incus GPU modes facilitate this sharing.
For VMs it would be great to be able to view the VM in a Wayland window much like running VMware Workstation. Same with Containers. Guessing the OCI Containers will run in a window like a regular application.
Obviously none of these features are required for server deployments and I am wondering if a Full Monty of server and desktop use cases is planned for Incus.
Stability and USB problems appear to have been fully resolved. Unrelated to Incus but means Fedora Atomic is the desktop distribution going forward due to stability and probably the best Wayland distro available today and for the medium to long term.
The USB instability on Linux Mint 22.1 was due to a faulty wired mouse causing electrical problems that were recorded as an over-current condition in the log. Since replacing the mouse all USB operation has been without error.
Unknown if the Green screens were due to the faulty mouse or GPU faults with Mint. However, since installing Fedora Silverblue the system has been rock solid with no system errors or Green screens.
Silverblue comes with Podman and Toolbx installed on an RPM-OSTREE base. I’d like to uninstall Podman and Toolbx and move to Incus on an RPM-OSTREE base to run integrated CLI and GUI applications for desktop and server use. Desktop will need to run GUI containers and virtual machines (including Windows) that can be displayed within Wayland windows.
I wanted to try Incus OS as the bare metal base instead of Fedora Silverblue but it is still in Alpha and understandably it is focused on server use cases and likely not suitable for a desktop/workstation use case.
It looks like you are on the right track. You can probably get everything working without uninstalling podman and toolbx. I think the only issue is with Docker.
Please keep us updated. I am curious to see how it works out.
Incus uses virtio-gpu (specifically virtio-vga) which will perform OpenGL command and buffer passthrough between the instance and host to give you accelerated graphics. Qemu 9.2 ships with Virtio-GPU Venus that instead does Vulkan passthrough, but I’m not sure if that is promoted to default in Incus since it relies on kernel patches found in the 6.14 series.
If I remember correctly from my past usage, you will be limited to a SPICE console, but you probably could adjust it to use the following Qemu CLI flag: -display sdl,gl=on or -display gtk,gl=on (there is nuance between the two options, iirc, GTK is more tested)
Happy to be corrected on that second paragraph if I’m wrong.
As @jarrodu mentioned, Incus won’t conflict with Podman or Docker The issues mainly stem when you want to use one in the other.
I used to run Fedora Kinoite for a period of time with Incus as an overlay package without any trouble (just had to follow steps on creating subuid and subgid parts found in the machine setup part of the installation guide) but swapped off to a Debian base recently because Fedora is stuck on 6.8 which is incompatible with Qemu 9.2
Is there a way to share a GPU across both Containers and Virtual Machines?
I remember John Carmack talking about OpenGL years ago and his conclusion was that it wasn’t keeping up with the technologies being developed in Direct3D and Vulkan. So it is not surprising that QMEU virtio-gpu is or has moved to Vulkan.
There seems to be two primary use cases for GPU virtualisation — seamless sharing across host, containers and virtual machines (probably where Wayland excels over x11) and GPU passthrough for dedicated virtual machines aka Windows gaming and cad.
Sorry for the late reply, but yes it’s entirely doable. VirtioGPU (both GL and Venus/Vulkan) don’t take full control over your physical hardware, Qemu instead spawns a new process: virglrenderer, and that interfaces between the OpenGL or Vulkan passthrough and your GPU.
You can verify this with nvidia-smi and AMD equivalent.
EDIT: here is an example usecase with Virtio-GPU Venus, note that the host DE is still running while the guest VM is just in fullscreen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmyQqrS09eo
Regarding configuration for Venus, you’ll likely be on your own, I have had difficulties replication the high degree of performance that the user has on my system, though it may be chalked up to configuration error and Layer 8/PEBKAC
