best setup for 2 OS at the same time

bnbc · January 16, 2019

I am interested in running 2 operating systems (windows and linux) on the same computer (with a program called synergy), but the idea is to have a setup efficient enough to play in Windows while on the other monitor I have Linux running other things. What I had thought is to have linux using my integrated graphics card, while running windows as VM using my dedicated GPU (through a passthrough). But I'm also interested in having both operating systems with separate hard drives with passthrough so they don't get saturated.

So I'm asking for help to look for different ideas trying to figure out what would be the cheapest setup, the most efficient one or the easiest way to materialize this project.

kelvinhall05 · January 16, 2019

Dude what is that formatting. Dear god.

But yes, if you want them running at the same time, have one in VM (sort of like 8 gamers 1 CPU but it's only 2 "gamers").

January 16, 2019

Synergy relies on network protocols, so even in a local machine there is a bit of overhead and delay, the best setup would be virtualizing the entire mouse, but obviously you need that on Linux too because in this way you couldn't exit the vm either if you are using lookinglass or the screen output

There is another method like Spice, but also in there it uses network protocol.

Looking glass has another mouse sharing capabilities but I don't know if that improved from the past.

Now imo the best method is passing the mouse from evdev, how would that work?

Basically the same as virtualizing the mouse to the vm, but with an hotkey combination which detaches it from the VM.

This is possible by two methods

1)VirtIO mouse emulation + EVDEV tweaks https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#Passing_keyboard/mouse_via_Evdev
2)Using scripts triggered by keyboard control (this is what I tested, but requires more configuration) ---> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#Swap_peripherals_to_and_from_the_Host