[Spice-devel] qxldod driver for Windows 11

Sat Sep 3 16:13:55 UTC 2022

Hi,

On Sat, Sep 03, 2022 at 03:30:27PM +0000, Carlos González wrote:
> First, thanks *very* much for your complete explanations, and
> at the same time offering apologies. Not justifiable, but I was
> kind of anxious and a bit desperate of finally setting up a
> win11 VM with SPICE just the way I did with win10.
>
> I think this is already well known but, why SPICE? For me, because of all
> the following features:
> ---Graphic acceleration --even if just 2D, QXL worked *far* better than any
> other available virtual driver
> ---All the paravirtualized drivers, which are still offering the best
> performance
> ---Easy USB and sound redirection
> ---Clipboard sharing
> ---Copy-and-paste --even if just files and only from host to guest
> ---Automatic resolution resizing with SPICE window
> And perhaps other ones I may be already forgetting...
>
> I already know what's said about software in general, that it's
> big enough and *always* comes and goes. But now that SPICE in
> general is dead, or in the process of, it'll take many years
> for another entire solution offering *all* these features to
> appear.
>
> I no longer want to set up windows VMs with generic virtualized
> drivers, and all what you just explained further supports this
> way of thinking.

Even for windows 10, it took quite some time to get qxl-dod in a
good state. Even with a bit more bandwidth usage and lack of
resolution resizing to almost arbitrary values (client's window
size), it worked well for your average display size (e.g: full
screen).

So, I'd at least give it a try for with windows 11. Clipboard and
USB redirection should work.

> So, humbly trying to ask here, what else can I do? Or where
> else to try asking?

Open source and remote? I'm not aware of something that has all
SPICE features but some people are betting on RDP.

> Thanks very much and apologies again.
>
> P.S.: small offtopic: I'm also having problems trying to set up TPM2
> emulation for win11 VM, using swtpm package. I think the author, user
> "stefanb", is an IBM employee, but employees never offer free support...
> Where could I ask for support with this? Thanks again.

Really, no one is obliged to give support for free. I'm here on a
Saturday evening on my own terms. Just stop that, please.

When the following MR gets merged, some tools like virt-manager
and gnome-boxes should be able to provide better guidance with
windows 11 instalation:

    https://gitlab.com/libosinfo/osinfo-db/-/merge_requests/362

You might find some discussions about new requirements of windows
11 in bugzilla, etc.

Cheers,
Victor

>
> El sáb, 3 sept 2022 a las 6:38, Frediano Ziglio (<freddy77 at gmail.com>)
> escribió:
>
> > Il giorno ven 2 set 2022 alle ore 22:23 Carlos González
> > <piteccelaya at gmail.com> ha scritto:
> > >
> > > So the "rumors" are true: you (in general) really did discontinue/kill
> > the qxl drivers, if not the entire SPICE project soon. Was it because IBM?
> > Since being sold to them the first one to die was Centos, now this...
> > >
> >
> > Hi Carlos,
> >    In Italy we use the expression "È come sparare sulla Croce Rossa"
> > (more or less "it's like shooting at the Red Cross").
> > It's like accusing a doctor trying to save a life that it's trying to
> > kill somebody.
> > As Victor is actively contributing to SPICE as a developer (you can
> > find multiple recent emails and commits in this ML and related
> > projects without much effort) is not kind to point fingers.
> >
> > > FYI:
> > >
> > https://gist.github.com/pojntfx/b860e123e649504bcd298aa6e92c4043#file-main-sh-L32
> > >
> > https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/virglrenderer-devel/2021-January/001897.html
> > > virtio-gpu implies virgl, and currently only works on Linux guests;
> > RedHat people explicitly deemed the Windows work "not worthy".
> > >
> >
> > Let's get back to the technical side of this thread.
> > That's not entirely true. Virgl it's an "option" to virtio-gpu. By
> > default Virgl is not enabled. Virgl adds 3D support to Qemu virtual
> > cards, as far as I know it's the only virtual GPU (bypass are not
> > virtual) in Qemu supporting 3D. Although QXL was born alongside SPICE
> > while Virgl is more related to Qemu directly, efforts were made to
> > support all features QXL provides using virtio-gpu. So the technical
> > suggestion Victor gave is not against SPICE. You have also to consider
> > the way QXL works and how the graphics software stacks evolved in
> > time. QXL design it's 2D only, supporting a lot of specific commands
> > and options for Windows 95/98/XP. Yes, you read well, Windows XP...
> > which was declared unsupported 12 years ago! At that time OSes relay
> > to the GPU plenty of complex 2D commands. Nowadays most OSes (if not
> > all but surely Linux, Windows and Mac) use 3D commands for everything,
> > and many brushes, raster operations and similars are long since gone.
> > Taken all that into account, with a modern OS the commands QXL and
> > virtio-gpu use are basically the same.
> >
> > > Thanks for killing the project.
> > >
> >
> > Now let's get back to the less technical.
> > Beside reiterating that pointing fingers to Victor is not fair nor kind...
> > Yes, SPICE was, company wise, well founded and supported by Red Hat
> > (which _had_ a specific team for it). After RedHat was acquired by IBM
> > some investments were moved from desktop side to the cloud. More or
> > less RedHat/IBM thinks that spending money on Linux desktop is not
> > worth much. That includes SPICE, Virgl and Windows drivers but others.
> >
> > Regards,
> >   Frediano
> >
> > > El vie, 2 sept 2022 a las 6:53, Victor Toso (<victortoso at redhat.com>)
> > escribió:
> > >>
> > >> Hi Carlos,
> > >>
> > >> On Fri, Sep 02, 2022 at 12:08:04AM +0000, Carlos González wrote:
> > >> > I downloaded latest virtio-win ISO, and by browsing it I
> > >> > noticed that, unlike the other drivers, for the qxldod one
> > >> > there's only up to win10, and no explicit win11 versions.
> > >> >
> > >> > Does this mean that there are no drivers for Windows 11, and no
> > >> > possibility of setting up a VM with full SPICE support?
> > >> >
> > >> > Thanks beforehand.
> > >>
> > >> You are correct, the last cycle of development was focused for
> > >> windows 10.
> > >>
> > >> I expect windows 11 to maintain some compatibility with windows
> > >> 10 so the drivers should work to some extent but I did not test
> > >> it.
> > >>
> > >> I'd not hope for further development on qxl unless there is
> > >> someone interested in investing time on it (and it would take
> > >> some time).
> > >>
> > >> I'd instead switch to virtio-vga / virtio-gpu as this seems to
> > >> have an active community.
> > >>
> > >>     https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-windows
> > >>
> > >> Cheers,
> > >> Victor
> >
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/spice-devel/attachments/20220903/a5f42316/attachment.sig>