In VirtualBox 2.2.0, which was released today, that is. The new OpenGL acceleration for Linux and Solaris guests allows compiz to run very nicely in a virtual machine. (Click the thumbnail for a Theora video of compiz running in an OpenSolaris guest in OS X.)
EDIT: I suppose I ought to add there’s some other cool stuff in 2.2.0 as well, particularly the ability to import/export appliances in OVF format.
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wooho!
great work 🙂
Is this feature present in the OSE edition, or is it only for the closed-source version of VirtualBox?
Sweet sweetness!
This is amazing!
@Marius: Good question… I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this isn’t available in the OSE version, but I’ll ask the team.
which driver are you using under virtualbox, vesa, intel ??
@el_barto: Just using the “vboxvideo” driver that’s installed with the VirtualBox guest additions.
I must say, this is amazing. Until now, opengl was about the only thing you couldn’t do in a VM. Well, I guess we showed us, huh?
Is only OpenGL supported or can DirectX be done allowing windows gaming without wine?
@Karl: It’s only OpenGL for now. I’ve heard that DirectX is on the roadmap, but I don’t know the priority/timeline for that.
Awesome! I was waiting for one of the VMs for OS X to finally support this.
Did anyone try gnome-shell with it yet?
Not yet, but it’s on my list to try…
@Marius: Have just confirmed with the dev team, the OpenGL acceleration code is open source.
Awesome!
(Not that I had any reason to think otherwise; my “this sounds too good to be true” reaction kicked in. E.g. now it thinks this is going to trigger new and interesting bugs in the intel driver when using UXA… 😉
@Marius: Well, I’ve already reported a couple of bugs in the OpenGL code, so don’t be afraid to report some more 🙂 http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Bugtracker
For DirectX support in Windows guest, see the new WineD3D project. It emulates DirectX through OpenGL in Windows guests so you can at least get some acceleration.