Running Windows programs on Linux (Week 2)

Rocky Linux General
1

I tried Wine, Wine in Bottles etc all fails. Never talk about it again.

I set up a virtual machine and that fails.

So let’s start with what works, using a QEMU as the virtual machine with a second graphics card and pass-through.

Why should anyone doing this start at what seems like the “extreme end” of solutions?

Because near ever other solution is going to fail to load software that seeks to detect a graphics card, which is pretty much anything serious.

Here are some issues with other approaches as that apply to using Rocky 9 with Wayland.

QEMU running Wayland using the default virtual is S L O W. I’m mean really slow. Like it refreshes in 1 cms squares per second. Completely unusable. Maybe if Spice is working that might be different but I haven’t managed to find a complete guide to doing that.

If you flip to X11 the performance is more normal. A bit slow but near usable.

Bug – The screen %, I’m working on 125% on UHD is reset in the switch between X11 and Wayland.

This set up won’t allow you to load software like SketchUp.

Currently, I’ve got 2 graphics cards, Radeon old and new, with one on a stub waiting for Windows. Both go to HDMI posts in the same monitor. Mouse and keyboard control go to the VM and Windows once started.

If I really need to get back to Linux I can pull out the USB and reset it to Linux. I think this can be done in software.

This is likely the best example of how to do this…

Same author…

This is the best write up on how to do the gpu pass-through.

To go with this you need a method to share a folder between the 2 systems, I’m guessing SAMBA but it does look like there might be other options. And some as you go trouble shooting advice.

And I think it is valid to provide some other than “nano” advice on editing config files.

I’m using “#kate /etc/default/grub” etc that’s could be useful to people that are intimidated by nano etc.

I think it should be a Wiki page. It’s a bit of a PITA using lots of different instructions that are for different versions of Linux and make them work on Rocky without the knowledge in your head about the difference between this and that in the instructions.

I would say that it is a good idea to install Cockpit before you start and be able to run the journal so you can see errors as they occur.

This is probably the last piece of the puzzle to configure.

https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/SPICE

Really needs someone Rocky to write this up but I’m happy to help with that. I can at least qualify what is written as working on my system.

I’d say it would be something that would be interesting to write up as written all on the terminal and options for using the GUI. For example you can get the PCI information from the UI using About System/Devices/PCI

Basically it would be interesting to see the topic written up specifically for Rocky 9 KDE (narrow) but expanded with methods that are both terminal and GUI.

2

Here is an example…

However, this is not enough to use SPICE. We need to enable the spice server in qemu-kvm. We also need a client to view the guest. So first be sure the client is installed:

yum install spice-client

[yani@maud ~]$ dnf search spice-client
Rocky Linux 9 - NFV 255 kB/s | 987 kB 00:03
Rocky Linux 9 - Realtime 251 kB/s | 974 kB 00:03
Rocky Linux 9 - SAP 3.6 kB/s | 8.4 kB 00:02
Rocky Linux 9 - SAPHANA 5.6 kB/s | 12 kB 00:02
No matches found.
[yani@maud ~]$ dnf search spice
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:38 ago on Wed 05 Jul 2023 05:31:42.
========================================== Name & Summary Matched: spice ===========================================
spice-vdagent.x86_64 : Agent for Spice guests

Muddy on I will without knowing right from wrong…

3

Thanks for this info.

I’m still a Linux newb and cant follow this process as its too advanced.

But I have to say I could really benefit from using a VM with GPU pass-through. I need to run some VFX software that can only run with real nvidia drivers.

I really hope there could be an official write up for Rocky Linux users to enable GPU passthrough using QEMU.
Thanks
Steve

4

I’m a newb too.

I can’t help you with nvidia stuff and I’m AMD all the way.

While the process is much the same the traps would be different.

Well it is a community release. It should be something we can write up as a community and not something that needs to be 100% done by Rocky staff.

It is likely to be easier and not more difficult to do for nvidia. It was a pain for AMD because the AMD install file needs to be edited so that it can find the location of the drivers.

I haven’t managed to solve all issues with this. I was doing it so I could run SketchUp then the trial expired.

I blew my Rocky install months ago and have been using a crappy windows box. As I suspect fixing the install with the knowledge I have is going take many hours, it on the back burner but coming up the list.