mint 14 unusably slow in virtualbox

[timbp]

I have just installed Mint14 - Cinnamon, 64-bit, in Virtualbox running on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and the linux virtual machine is unusable.
It takes about 10 s from clicking on the menu button before the menu appears. Double-clicks are usually not recognised, so it takes 4 or 5 attempts to open a folder, then about 15 s for the folder to open.

Have I done something wrong in specifying the virtual machine, or is it not reasonable to run 64-bit mint on 64-bit windows host (should I go to 32-bit mint?), or is it not reasonable to run mint on a windows host at all?

My host machine:
Windows 7 Professional, Service Pack 1, 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-2320 CPU @ 3.00GHz 3.2 GHz
Memory: 4.00 GB

The virtual machine:
1 CPU, 100% execution cap
1024 MB memory
128 MB video memory
3D Acceleration enabled
Dynamically allocated vdi storage, max 20GB
Bridged networking
Guest additions installed

[bird2010]

I'm getting the exact same experience. I can run videos in LInux Mint 13 with no problems. Help! The Linux Mint 14 fixes a couple of severe problems for me. I was so happy with this new version until I tried to play a video. Please help! I had to go back to my Windows 7 OS to watch the NRA video: http://nranews.com/pressconferencereplay.html

Please help!

Here are my specs:

Intel i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
16.0 GB
64-bit OS
Windows 7 Pro Service Pack 1
VirtualBox 4.2.6 r82870
Linux Mint 14 with all service updates

[Orbmiser]

Did you try and give VM 2gb? as a startup normal 14 no vm running for me is around 1gb-1.1 with no major apps running.
Can get that down to about 800mb if I disable a few startup apps.

Seems to me you are running out of ram?
Could be wrong as new to linux and no VM experience. From what I've read 2gb is recommended.
If not at least got the thread bumped up so other's more experience than me can chime in.
.

[bird2010]

My computer has 16 GB RAM total. I have given Linux Mint 14 a total of 8 GB RAM and 50 GB hard drive space. I gave it the same resources as Linux Mint 13. Linux Mint 13 can play videos with not problems. Linux Mint 14, on the other hand, cannot play videos. It plays the sound and then shows a picture of the video and then continues to play the audio no problem. However, it only shows a single frame of the video every few seconds. Very annoying.

Any ideas?

[Orbmiser]

Sorry no and my suggestion above was for original poster.
On the other you have a steaming rig and now just sounds like a bug of video driver or codecs use in VM?
Just shooting in the dark as don't have a clue myself.

As 14 video runs great using the open driver on my ati 4350 dual core 4gb rig.
But not running in it in VMware either as see all those kinds of issues in VM when newer versions come out.

Hopefully someone with more experience will chime in to help you.
.

[bird2010]

Here is what I did:

* Installed latest VirtualBox Guest Additions. I got a warning that stated that the Guest Additions were already part of Linux Mint 14. I installed it anyway. I rebooted and the videos still ran choppy (looked like a slideshow, not a video).

* Cranked up the number of processors to 4. I was only running one processor for this Virtual Machine. Now the videos look great!

Best wishes to everyone.

[AlbertP]

Make sure you have 3D acceleration enabled in the virtualbox's settings.

[SpinyNorman]

I believe the issue is that Cinnamon is based on 3D graphics APIs which really need Linux DRI (Direct Rendering Interface) support to perform well. Unfortunately Mint (as of of Ubuntu 12.04) dropped support for the original DRI1 interface and now requires DRI2, whereas VirtualBox still only provides a DRI1 driver - hence no DRI support for Cinnamon+VirtualBox.

Hopefully a DRI2 VirtualBox driver will be forthcoming, but in the meantime the best you can do is to use Mint 14 MATE (or GNOME classic) which performs fine without DRI, or hope that Mint may reinstate DRI1 support for the sake of VirtualBox.

The odd twist to this is that Mint 13 Cinnamon - if you can get it to work under VIrtualBox (it's very tempermental) - appears to work acceptably fast, but is based on Ubuntu 12.04 so ought to have the same performance issues.

Ben

[SpinyNorman]

Well, on further investigation there seems to be a bit more going on here.

I'd previously had Mint 14 Cinnamon running very slow in VirtualBox, but just rebooted the virtual machine and now it's working fine. If I run /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p it (now) shows the OpenGL driver to be Humper/Chromium, same as Mint 13, which apparently is a pass-thru driver to the host-OS thereby (I assume) avoiding the need for DRI.

I'm really not sure what Changed with my Mint 14 Cinnamon setup for it to suddenly start working.

Ben

[AlbertP]

I believe the issue is that Cinnamon is based on 3D graphics APIs which really need Linux DRI (Direct Rendering Interface) support to perform well.

DRI is nothing but an internal interface between driver components and the kernel. Cinnamon basically needs OpenGL to work, and doesn't care about what kind of rendering is behind. Even indirect rendering does work. Indirect rendering only provides OpenGL 1.4, but for Cinnamon that's enough. But indirect rendering only happens if you have a problem with your graphics driver.
The proprietary drivers also don't use DRI1 or DRI2, they have their own means of communication with the kernel. But AMD and NVIDIA do provide OpenGL, so Cinnamon can be made working on them.

What you are having in Virtualbox, is rather a difference between software and hardware acceleration of OpenGL. Virtualbox is supposed to use the host system's 3D acceleration, to accelerate the system inside the box too. This is somehow not working well for everybody.

[timbp]

I tried bumping up the memory to 2GB, but that didn't help.
I have at last got around to trying the 32-bit version, and that works fine. So it seems running the 64-bit client in virtualbox is the problem (yes the Windows 7 host is 64 bit).

[Urieal]

Upping the number of CPUs made a pretty dramatic difference for me.

Running it with 4GB Ram & 4 CPU on a Win7 host machine using a i7-3770 w/ 16GB RAM total.
Not super snappy, but not bad. Def. 100% better than with 1 CPU.

[legont]

I had the same problem with xfce version. It turned out to be a simple mistake - I've chosen Ubuntu as OS option while creating VirtualBox machine. Once I recreated it with Ubuntu64 and reinstalled Mint, everything became fast and nice (2G on 1 CPU). No need to install additions either as they appear to be included with the distro.

[Ste67]

I had the same problem with xfce version. It turned out to be a simple mistake - I've chosen Ubuntu as OS option while creating VirtualBox machine. Once I recreated it with Ubuntu64 and reinstalled Mint, everything became fast and nice (2G on 1 CPU). No need to install additions either as they appear to be included with the distro.

Hi,
just a question: is your host machine 64 or 32. Is it possible run a virtual 64 machine on a 32 host os (in my case, too bad, a win vista home preminum).
Thanks
Ste

[AlbertP]

@ Ste67: In fact you should have opened a new topic for this. Even though this one is about Virtualbox, it's a totally different question.
Please see: http://askubuntu.com/questions/21902/ru ... bit-ubuntu. It's about Ubuntu but the same thing applies to other systems.

[legont]

@ Ste67: I've 64 bit Win 7 host in this case.

[cimux]

I had same problem running Min13 64 on a windows xp x64.

The problem was related to chipset and audio controller used during virtual machine creation. Now using PIIX3 and ICH AC97 and after reinstalling Mint, both video and audio works smoothly