12.04 lagging with virtual machine ?

[MontrealCorp]

hi , since i am new with ubuntu, i decide to install virtualbox to install a ubuntu 12.04 guest virtual machine, even tho my host is, as well, ubuntu 12.04.

the reason is when i am not sure of something i might try or install on my host ubuntu, i prefer to start virtualbox and experiment on my virtual ubuntu OS to see if everything run ok and i did not make a mistake.

i do have windowns XP as a guest virtual OS.

my windows XP run smoothly with sometimes a bit of lag that do not last past 2 sec.

but when i try to use my guest ubuntu virtual OS, it is lagging for like 10sec if not even more pretty often .

is it normal and if it is not, what can i do to fix this ?

by the way i allowed 1.5G of ram on both virtual machine while my host ubuntu has 3.6G ram in total.

for the setting on my virtual OS ubuntu in the display segment, i did allowed 3d ( i could not allowed 2d it seem with ubuntu), but i do not think it matters because it is the second time i installed ubuntu in my virtualbox and i had previously check neither of those option of 2d and 3d and it still lagged has badly has it is now .

am i missing anything ?

ty

ps: it is even worst , the machine just stop responding after very few actions, when i use a guest account or another account that i create in my virtual machine, when basically i do not use my administrator account on my virtual OS ubuntu.

[brusegadi]

I run two mint (nadia, one cinnamon and one mate) guests on an ubuntu 12.04 host and I have noticed that they are generally slower than the windows XP guest. I give them the max allowed video memory (128M) and 1G ram. That said, virtualbox seems to offer more features for the windows guest so I imagine it may have something to do with that.

I remember I used to run a mint Isadora guest on ubuntu 10.04 and it run smoothly, so this may have to do with the window manager, since it changed between these releases - GNOME2 to (unity, mate, cinnamon respectively). Since you use the virtual machine to try stuff out on your system, using ubuntu 10.04 as guest (isadora corresponds to this release) would not be of much help. But, if you use the virtual machine to sandbox a web browser, reverting to an older version with better performance might be good.

[Paddy Landau]

You have 3.6 Gb, shared as 1.5 Gb for the guest and 1.1 Gb for the host.

If you are using 64-bit Ubuntu, that really is not quite enough. In my experience, you need a full 2 Gb for Ubuntu to run acceptably, which would mean you'd need 4 Gb RAM. I have 4Gb, and even then it often gets laggy when running a VM. (XP can make do with much less RAM, which is why it runs better.)

While running your VM, I would suggest that you close down all non-essential applications in the host, unless you can afford the better option of adding RAM to your machine — 6 Gb would be lovely.

EDIT: You could try using Lubuntu instead of Ubuntu. Lubuntu is designed for lower-spec computers.

[MontrealCorp]

well ty for answering.

actually i run 32bit ubuntu not 64.

but i might try to buy another 2 ram i guess it might be ok.

i still do not get why it lag so much, i tough xp would need more ram then ubuntu 12.04

[collisionystm]

well ty for answering.

actually i run 32bit ubuntu not 64.

but i might try to buy another 2 ram i guess it might be ok.

i still do not get why it lag so much, i tough xp would need more ram then ubuntu 12.04

1GB of ram is fine for your virtual ubuntu.
XP 32 bit does not need more ram. On a new install it will actually run idle at around 128mb of ram.

Ubuntu desktop runs slow virtually simply because of Compiz and the QT interface that ubuntu is built on. Compiz takes alot of system resources to work and the QT side of ubuntu that is used in its fallback mode was not built that well. If you want to see how well Ubuntu runs virtually without compiz and QT, run 10.04 LTS and see how it flys. That was back in the days of metacity and speed!