[GTALUG] Fwd: Living in Virtual Machines

[Mauro Souza]

I have heard of Qubes OS a long time ago, and wanted to give it a shot. But
never did.
I don't know if it will work for what you want, but you could take a look.
On Jul 2, 2015 16:38, "Giles Orr" <gilesorr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Forwarded from Jamon, with a similar idea to Daniel's.  I looked at
> containers and haven't totally ruled it out, but I think I prefer full
> OS installs.  Obviously containers would use a lot less hard drive
> space, but full virtualization offers more isolation.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jamon Camisso
> Date: 2 July 2015 at 15:14
> Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Living in Virtual Machines
>
> Hey top posting from an email that isn't able to post to tlug ... feel
> free to forward this link to the list if you like:
>
> https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/docker-containers-on-the-desktop/
>
> Using docker's volumes feature to bind mount directories and files into
> a container allows things like running Xorg, with persistent writes to
> shared files. No NFS needed even.
>
> Jamon
>
> On 07/02/2015 12:09 PM, Giles Orr wrote:
> > I have this idea that's been slowly forming in my head.  I wanted to
> > run it by TLUG for opinions to find out if I'm totally crazy or if it
> > might work.
> >
> > I hope to set up my desktop (and probably my laptop as well) to have a
> > Debian stable base OS - about as stripped as I can manage, just X with
> > a lightweight window manager (probably OpenBox).  On top of that would
> > be VirtualBox, the idea being to run all my applications from virtual
> > machines.
> >
> > Since I'd have multiple machines accessing the same /home/, I'd want
> > NFS.  That could be run by the host OS, but I was thinking about using
> > OpenWRT as the NFS server.  But that immediately runs into a
> > difficulty: it appears that getting the VirtualBox Guest Additions
> > running in OpenWRT is (very?) difficult, so I'd probably have to use
> > raw partition access.  The problem with that is that if the partition
> > is accessed simultaneously by any application on the host OS, you can
> > munge the partition.
> >
> > I'm also planning on running another OpenWRT instance: this would be
> > used for routing, with all the other virtual machines going through it
> > to access the outside world.  Among other things, that would mean I
> > only have to administer a firewall in one place.  One idea I'm still
> > considering is giving full control of the network card to the OpenWRT
> > instance and making the host OS go through OpenWRT to get to the
> > outside world ...
> >
> > This could all probably be done with KVM rather than VirtualBox, but I
> > prefer VB not only because I'm more familiar with it, but also because
> > .VDI disc images can vary in size (Qemu's .qcow2 image format are
> > fixed size) and because VirtualBox handles full screen display of OSes
> > better (at least once Guest Additions is installed).  I'm happy to
> > listen to reasons in favour of KVM.
> >
> > Other virtual machines would include TinyCore, SliTaz, and Debian
> > Stretch.  The latter would probably be my primary OS.  The thought was
> > to ssh from the host OS to the guest with X forwarding, and then run a
> > launcher from the guest on the host so any applications run from the
> > launcher were from the guest.
> >
> > Advantages:
> > - I get to tinker with multiple OSes (something I enjoy)
> > - if I'm about to go to a dubious website, I can clone a virtual
> > machine, use it for the dubious visit, then destroy it
> >
> > Disadvantages that I've thought of so far:
> > - memory usage
> > - speed reduction
> > - hard drive usage for disk images
> > - complexity
> > - mounting USB sticks on guests is extremely problematic
> > - playing sound/video from guests through the host is imperfect
> > - hard to determine where an application is running from
> >
> > I'm sure there are many, many other problems with this idea.  Go to
> > town, that's why I'm here.
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr at gmail.com
> ---
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