Speed Up Ubuntu 12.10 Guest on VirtualBox

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Speed Up Ubuntu 12.10 Guest on VirtualBox

After installing Ubuntu 12.10 as a guest operating on Windows 8 via VirtualBox, I found its response rather luckluster. Compared it to dual-booting Ubuntu 12.10, it's like night-and-day. So after messing around with it for a while, i found that Unity requires 3D acceleration. The default VirtualBox installation provides 3D acceleration via CPU emulation through LLVMpipe, rather than the GPU. You can see if your installation uses LLVMpipe by issuing the following command in the Terminal:

  /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

If Unity is going through LLVMpipe, you can increase its performance drastically by following these steps:

1. Install guest additions if you haven't already.
2. Add "vboxvideo" into "/etc/modules". You'll need sudo and your favorite editor to perform this step.
3. Shutdown the Ubuntu 12.10 virtual machine.
4. Enable 3D acceleration in VirtualBox settings for Ubuntu 12.10.

After you boot up the virtual machine, you should see a drastic improvement in speed. In fact, the launcher bar will be transparent for a nice visual effect.

It does seem to add a few side-effect though, such as auto-hiding the launcher doesn't allow your mouse to reveal it. And the VirtualBox toolbar no longer shows up on the screen.

Jake
Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:52:49 +0400

The VirtualBox toolbar now works correctly all of a sudden. I guess a computer shutdown and restart did the trick. But revealing of the launcher still doesn't work.

Jake
Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:19:34 +0400

Nope. The VirtualBox toolbar sometimes shows up and some times doesn't. To force it to show up, I have to use CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the Task Manager.

Jake
Tue, 16 Apr 2013 05:35:02 +0400

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Title: Ubuntu: Revealing Dash Without the Mouse
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Tracked: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 03:36:39 +0400

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