Is it possible to run Windows and Ubuntu as a virtual machine and make it run even close to an actual install

I have:
I 5, 8 gigs of ram, new Samsung 120gb SSD.

I have it running. Works .... but a little sluggish.

While setting up I gave it 3 gigs or RAM and 40 gigs of Virtual Hard Drive.

Thanks,
Lyle

P.S. this my first question

Windows 7 is the main computer with Ubuntu 14 LTS as the VM

This post almost got lost.

First of all howdy and welcome to LQ. Second is something I should point out. A zero reply post gets put on top of others so edit your posts as opposed to add second post. Sometimes many of us think someone is working on it already.

The simple answer is that a VM client can run close to or in some cases actually faster than a single physical system. This assumes some things however. In general, if one has a modern computer that has enough resources and has full support for VM technologies then yes. A client would run quite well in most cases.

Now if you fail to have enough resources on the host, or not VM supported fully hardware, or excessive loads, or poor config then you could notice lack or performance.


I was going to go on about history but this ought to do.

Hi Lyle.

It's my experience that Windows 7 needs at least 4GB of RAM to run well, whether it is a virtual machine or an installation directly on hardware. With 8 GB of physical RAM on your host PC you could raise the RAM allocated to the VM to 4 GB or 5 GB and not have much impact on the Linux host.

I get the feeling this is not a well supported hardware platform and your vm isn't using full hardware support.

How about you tell us a bit more about the computer this is on. I assume it is on a laptop?

A VM can certainly run nearly as fast as a regular installation, close enough that you'd likely never know the difference beyond doing benchmarks. There's no reason that you should notice a problem given your computer specs, IMO. I regularly run my main OS plus two VMs on a laptop with hardware not too dissimilar from yours, and everything runs just peachy. Then again none of those OSs are Windows, which is an unforgivable memory hog.

In my experience, a 64-bit host works really great. Of course the better the hardware resources (alot of RAM and right type of hard disk) can really make a difference.

You didn't say what the hardware is like for your host.

Thanks guys.
I have :

Gigabyte ga-z97x-ud3h
Samsung SSD 850 PRO
i5-4670 CPU @ 3.40GHz x 4
8 megs of ram

Window is Host with the virtual box set for 4 megs of ram and 30 gigs of virtual hard drive

I have not used any of the SUDO commands to change how the system reads and writes to the hard drive (should I ?).

Would anothe 8 megs of RAM help much?

Thanks

That system ought to work great depending on vm loads.

I'd suspect that you have some bottle neck at some place. Could be that you don't have VM support enabled in bios.