-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any special hardware recommendations for Workstation? The 'requirements[1]' drafted are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped down or built up to run *something* on most any modern machine. Workstation is a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get gnome-shell running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context you want Workstation to be used in. Thoughts?

However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno(a)wolff.to

On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa <elad(a)fedoraproject.org

However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the

people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's

eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to

OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated

in the recommended section. If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to

Running in a VM on a desktop is actually a very important usecase.

-- -Elad Alfassa.

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Virtualization opens an entirely different context for hardware requirements. QXL for guests hosted on my low power i3 utility server run gnome-shell quite acceptably; my i7 workstation brings that up to near-native for modern integrated graphics. Traditional cirrus type graphics deliver a wholly unusable experience on the same hardware. QXL isn't a magic bullet, though; on hosts with older hardware, performance definitely degrades. I don't have a lot of experience with VMWare or vbox stacks, but I assume there is a spectrum of unacceptable to adequate to excellent there as well.

On Tue, 2014-09-02 at 13:34 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote: > The main extra requirement that you need to use Fedora Workstation in > a > VM is memory - trying to run Fedora Workstation in a VM with less than > 4GB on the host is futile; I've never seen that work. I can run Fedora in Boxes with a 3 GB host. I think it performs best with a 1.5 GB guest. It's a bit sluggish, but totally usable as long as the host isn't doing anything else. (Trying to run Boxes and a web browser in the host at the same time is a recipe for disaster.) I've noticed that Boxes recommends 1 GB as the right amount of memory for a Fedora guest. This seems too low. -- desktop mailing list desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno(a)wolff.to&gt; wrote: > On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, > Elad Alfassa <elad(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote: >> However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - >> people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, >> eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own >> OS on our own virtualization platform. >> I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be >> in the recommended section. > > If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to make the > system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a > recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for > workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier > case. I disagree. Testing Workstation in a VM before installing it is something we should very much care about. There are also cases where people want to use a VM for developing some new part of the stack and running Workstation as a VM to test that out is also very viable. josh

On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Thomas Gilliard <satellitgo(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > Is it possible to add VirtualBox to workstation. I understand that t is > free software and only the extensions are for personal use. > No. We will not add VirtualBox.

I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX.

Hi On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Elad Alfassa wrote: > > I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and > besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our > virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX. GNOME Boxes certainly has a better UX however that by itself doesn't solve the needs of developers. As someone working on a role that requires me to use VirtualBox, let me quickly outline what my needs are to switch over 1 Should be able to import images in virtualbox format and able to import/export OVF/OVA format images 2) Should be usable with vagrant 3) I need to be able to distribute one VM image that will work across all major platforms Rahul -- desktop mailing list desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop

There is, in fact, a libvirt driver for it. (As well as a separate KVM driver.) But it doesn't work flawlessly, as I understand it, and perhaps more crucially, vagrant involves a bunch of ruby and therefore packaging work that no one has gotten all untangled.

Hi On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Elad Alfassa wrote: I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX. GNOME Boxes certainly has a better UX however that by itself doesn't solve the needs of developers. As someone working on a role that requires me to use VirtualBox, let me quickly outline what my needs are to switch over 1 Should be able to import images in virtualbox format and able to import/export OVF/OVA format images

On 09/01/2014 07:19 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote: > On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Bastien Nocera > <bnocera(a)redhat.com <mailto:bnocera@redhat.com>> wrote: > Hey Pete, > ----- Original Message ----- >> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 >> >> I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any >> special hardware recommendations for Workstation? The >> 'requirements[1]' drafted >> are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped >> down or built up to run *something* on most any modern >> machine. Workstation is >> a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get gnome-shell >> running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context you want >> Workstation to be used in. >> >> Thoughts? > Can we split that into a "minimum" and "recommended" variants? > The minimum would be what's mentioned in "minimum system configuration" plus the > mention of "CPU accelerated graphics" and minimum resolution. > The recommended would be what's currently in "Minimum Hardware > for Accelerated Desktops". > Possibly with 2GB of RAM (so that integrated graphics don't > impact us quite as much). > Does that make sense? > Cheers -- desktop mailing list desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop > Hey I think 2GB is a good "recommended" value, and that 1GB > should be the "minimal". From my tests in VMs, 1GB is barely usable (I assume that 1GB on actual hardware with non-integrated graphics would be a bit faster, but still). > However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the > minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. > I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated > graphics" to be in the recommended section. > -- -Elad Alfassa. When I was originally drafting the Hardware Requirements copy, I tried to stay away from the minimum/recommended distinction. It isn't easy to draw a line and say "on this side you will have a great experience, and on this side you will have a merely functional experience, and across this other line it probably won't run at all." I think users can generally understand "more is better", and make an appropriate judgment based on explanation of the factors involved and available options. Following that line of thinking, we could say *suggest* at least 2GB of RAM, with a caveat that less RAM might be a compromise some could find acceptable, and more RAM would be better. WRT the actual figure, systems that are preconfigured with 2GB of RAM are probably going to be mid/high Pentium 4 era systems, or low/mid range Core2Dou era systems with i915 -ie 4 years or more out of production. A suggest/recommend of 4GB RAM would put you in the area of modern low-end systems and older mid/high end systems. Looking at RAM in isolation, 4GB is probably excessive, but the class of system that comes with <4GB OOTB may generally not be able to deliver an "acceptable" experience. Just food for thought - the stated hardware recommendations for Workstation can of course be whatever the Workstation group deems appropriate. KVM/QXL/Spice is effectively hardware acceleration; I'll elaborate on that further in the thread.

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When I was originally drafting the Hardware Requirements copy, I tried to stay away from the minimum/recommended distinction. It isn't easy to draw a line and say "on this side you will have a great experience, and on this side you will have a merely functional experience, and across this other line it probably won't run at all." I think users can generally understand "more is better", and make an appropriate judgment based on explanation of the factors involved and available options. Following that line of thinking, we could say *suggest* at least 2GB of RAM, with a caveat that less RAM might be a compromise some could find acceptable, and more RAM would be better. WRT the actual figure, systems that are preconfigured with 2GB of RAM are probably going to be mid/high Pentium 4 era systems, or low/mid range Core2Dou era systems with i915 -ie 4 years or more out of production. A