Desktop Virtualization using SPICE on LInux

In this episode of the CyberGizmo we explore how to use virtualization to create your desktop and access it with small low power client machines to get a near desktop experience from one or more Linux desktops. The techniques described in this video are a part of VDI and desktop virtualization that you can use in the office or at home.

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[joesizzlin]

this is was a great video and answered some very basic questions of mine that I could not find elsewhere. Thank you so much!

[FilleMang]

Great channel. Love your format. Keep it up!

[marcello]

hey folks any ideas on how to get this working with wayland? the compositor requires 3d acceleration hence no spice would work. also a bummer is that h264 decoding only works with passthrough a gpu with the chipset

[joechristl]

Is this only for GUI environments? I guess its pointless for just obtaining a shell on a LXC

[leeh.]

Planet Arakis...ahh you're a fan of Herbert. Dune...the original one rocks! Next one...not so much...and so on. And wow...This reminds me of Terminal Services/Citrix. I'm currently doing Desktop Support for the third Citrix shop I've worked in...and am very comfortable troubleshooting and assisting others in.
I've never used this before... and it makes me want to install it on some hardware. I wish I had a big old server to put it on :)
And OK...I'm gonna take a shot at why...Security first. And maybe you've got someone that you want to give access to an App that's gonna be running on the server so you don't have to worry about local support. I'm looking forward to the next video to see if my guesses are correct
Thanks DJ...great vid!

[markarca]

I have read about SPICE from the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization documentation. It was later became oVirt.

[donaldwilliams]

Thank you for explanation on how SPICE works. I have been playing around with it and it has good and bad points. One thing I noticed with MS RDP is that often the audio gets way out of sync. You have to disconnect/reconnect to recover. It seems to be a very common problem. In your video you mentioned SPICE vs. SPICE with two or three monitors. From what I read that's for OS's like Windows that won't let you add another monitor live. With Linux you can (mostly) do it live with the Display 2 though 4 checkboxes. Funny thing for me is that not all Linux distros are allowing me to do that. Even if I set SPICE to two or more monitors. But ubuntu with UnIty, Zorin Core both work and I can add more screens but not ubuntu MATE or Debian Spiral. I agree the video streaming option is a must! I would be nice if SPICE also had multiuser support. With proxmox maybe using containers woud help lower the resource load of having to have a VM per user. But for my home lab it's way better than noVNC.

[damiendye]

Some issues here, 1st you should be using the qemu agent to get full client support like folder sharing etc. 2nd why do you need qemu-kvm on the client? You just need virt viewer

[jeffreyplum]

Spice uses a model similar to that used by IBM's VM OS. Each User is in their own VM. I understand in production, clients should be limited to a screen keyboard mouse and network link. The home Lab may relax these requirements with certain virtualization systems. Proxmox runs on bare metal, esentailly headless Gnome Boxes and Virtmanager run under a desktop Linux. I have a former gaming system. it has many cores and plenty of memory. Its extra horsepower can be used by VMs under boxes or Virtmanager . I have older quad core desktops which I may cluster under Proxmox. Any desktop or laptop ban handle the KBD / display. side. Older systems may run out of video power to run Xwindows and applications. Stripped of their video workloads, they may run VMs nicely. Guest VMs can be smaller if the host does file serving for them. Host Os and VM images need to be on fast SSD ( Ideally NVME) disk, while bulk data can be on old HDDs. Again this mimics the old VM mainframe practice. This is for all training lab setup, I cannot afford a dedicated server. You gave me the missing pieces I needed to wring the most out of my aging desktop systems. God bless you.

[phlo]

I tried this on Proxmox 6.2, but had no luck to get audio working. I've tried all 3 virtual audio device alternatives (ich9-intel-hda, intel-hda, AC97) without success. Does anyone has suggestion?

[matthiasmartin]

The noise in your room (AC?) sounds exactly like the background noise loop in a certain Quake 1 level..., "Ziggurat Vertigo" maybe?

[avmcv]

Hi DJ
Am loving your videos. Can you ever do something concerning NUC's and running Linux (best distros) on them.
Would appreciate your experiences and learnings.

[fil-os-of]

Thanks for video. But I have one question: how are competing connections implemented in spice? Can I connect from multiple clients to the same VM at the same time?

[bertjan]

I'm still new to this, so I probably missed something in the linked docs, but how would I connect to a running Spice session from my client (Linux) machine, without logging in to PM first?

[sleepyeyesvince]

Thanks DJ. This is something that Windows Server does well with RDP, which I am very familiar with having used it daily at work for over 10 years. I would consider implementing something like this at home for the family, but with a LInux Server. The benefits of centralising management of user machines (as a virtualised desktop viewed through a "thin-client" type setup), with centralised data storage (and therefore backups). It appears as though Spices doesn't support multiple concurrent users (multisession) each with their own individual virtualised environment connected to the same VM on the server. Was this supposed to be the "ticketing" function you mentioned briefly in the video? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how this compares to the Linux Terminal Server Project?

[davorinrusevljan]

I have been using it for years to setup various work VMs, especially if I work for different clients I would set up VM for each of them and work from there. Host was Ubuntu 20.04. Smooth video, sound, easy USB pass through, very small difference between working on VM and host.

But good things do not last, Red Hat decided to ditch SPICE from RHEL. I started setting Alma Linux 9.0 top be my new virtualization host, only to find out that SPICE is no longer supported. Such a shame.

[junwangmn]

Thanks for great video, I follow your step setup Spice on Proxmox, using Windows 10 to remote to Fedora32, vm got 2 Core, 8GB RAM, but vm always reach to 100% when I just browse or watch Youtube. Do you know what I am missing?

[elementalnova]

Narts, was looking forward to virtualization with the Spice Melange

[tgrucker]

What are you using for a server, disk size, memory, hardware?

[Maik.iptoux]

2 years later and no one can create build an spice client for an Chromebook. Is it so hard to create this apps for an Chromebook? Because it's also running on Linux.