Question SBC Hypervisor Question

Oct 23, 2021
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Ive heard or bare-metal hypervisors and thought about having some stripped down system installed for the sole purpose of launching the VM and wanted to discuss this before I choose the motherboard, parts etc.

So here is the basic premise I’m looking to build a small computer,
  • Hardware directly: short list of supported systems(limited driver availability)
  • Virtualisation: Long list of supported systems(drivers easier to get)
How do I get the sound to work in “emulator” for Old/Obscure OS?
How do I get the sound to work in “NicheMmotherboard123” for Old/Obscure OS?
I want to configure a single board x86 computer to simply run a virtual machine
But still want to have the user experience of running it directly on the hardware.

For example, use of USB, physical hard disks, keyboard combinations, system off when the vm has shut down etc
Drivers and new hardware breaking compatibility with older systems is the main point of this approach.

This and some operating systems having different maximum settings or could utilize all the system resources
Seen some Intel Nucs and Rock pi but i would be looking for a unit with good options for cooling but i hear AMD has less hardware level backdoors from the PLA and NSA(compared with Intel) most viruses these days use backdoors that PRC and USA explicitly asked for anyway(dont forget those daily updates subject to this same premise).

What i an looking to build is for running software and some USB peripherals from the more recent era of retro computing,
and also some software/website testing.

It would in theory be easy to get drivers for the more generic hardware simulated by the hypervisor and thus I only have to deal with the driver and secureboot headache once.

What would be a good choice for virtual machine software?
 
Oct 23, 2021
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Each one of these has its pros and cons
  • Linux KVM
  • Oracle' VirtualBox
  • Microsoft' Hyper-V
For pure VMs, without hardware virtualization, I'd go with Hyper-V (as long as your hardware supports it). Otherwize, I'd choose KVM.
The question of if or not my hardware supports it is not something I can answer yet.
Thought it best to get some advice before I select my hardware.

I assume that Microsoft’s offering would have some tedious software activation and not sure it would be any better than buying some specialized version of vmware.

Isn't Linux KVM a feature of Linux used by the emulators?
recommended distro?
So if I were to use that it would be through something like QEMU or VirtualBox, no?

These typically run in a window and some key combinations skip the guest VM and go to the host PC.

Can I configure the guest OS to get priority for this?

In virtual machines you often need to switch back to the host pc to send key combinations to the guest or adjust network settings etc, not very good for the user experience as this project needs to feel like its running on the hardware.
 
Oct 23, 2021
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You're making way more difficult that it has to be...
  • get a mid-range PC
  • install Windows Pro, Hyper-V, try it with several guest VMs
  • reinstall Windows, install Virtual Box, repeat
  • get eg ProxMox, repeat
  • make notes, see which one will best cover your needs
Uncertain windows will cover my needs as a host os,
I think it might make more sense to use Linux instead.

Windows 10/11 is going to use a large chunk of the system resources running in the background and if you are just going to load React OS or an old BeOS ,Windows 2000 etc that’s a bit of a waste

Ive seen some single board computers that have similar secs to a high end p a couple of years ago and that’s what I was thinking about when i thought about this project