homebrew-qemu-virgl VS dot

If you want a DE like GNOME or KDE then use this qemu package, graphics run like butter IMO on my M1 MacBook Air (though only on Linux guests, not Windows) https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-virgl

I didn't use this, but a similar/related project that is for MacOS, https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-virgl

Vagrant is an orthogonal tool to this, it is a VM orchestrator not an actual VM. What does this do: well, qemu doesn't have virgl support merged yet, so you need to go to some lengths to compile it for yourself.

All of the other stuff (spice, virtio) is for "it should be a nice user experience" above and beyond simply fast. In other words, you should be able to copy and paste between the host OS and the guest. You should be able to slide your mouse across the border of the VM window and do some clicking around then simply slide it back out and use your mouse with native host-OS windows again.

These things are all not granted when you use qemu out of the box. I have this intense 25-lines "qemu" script for invoking qemu-system properly. It was enlightening but I'm not sure how much I was enriched by the process of actually figuring all this out.

Quickemu is for making this easier (and on Linux.)

How about the build with VIRGL support here?

I recently discovered QEMU, switched from VirtualBox on my Mac (Intel, Big Sur), and have been loving the improved performance. Running Linux Mint is amazing, especially after knazarov's homebrew package of the 3D-accelerated QEMU-Virgl project.

Yes! https://github.com/kingdonb/dot/blob/ubuntu-vm/bin/qemu

This expects you're using the special qemu from the prior link, compiled with homebrew. (else I think there will be no virtio-vga-gl video driver?)

The guest OS is an Ubuntu VM. I think the instructions say to use a recent Fedora/Silverblue for a reason (there are some things that don't quite work right around window resizing.)

Each time I start the VM, it shows up with tiny tiny pixels and the menubar does not work. I switch to another app, switch back, go to the menu and enable "zoom to fit" and it's off to the races. Other things to be aware of, if you resize the window it actually scales the pixels, (which is OK and doesn't even have any noticeable perf impact because OpenGL, I guess)