Run X11/GUI apps seamlessly on OpenBSD VMM with Xephyr

[@RHTORAS]

Can you show how to use gui apps on x11as root and with doas with openbsd without the need to add xauth+ ? thanks...

[@TheOpenBSDguy]

I add it to my todo list

[@stellarorbit1341]

First! Also, this was awesome!

[@FishKungfu]

Excellent!

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

This was interesting. I always thought about trying SSH & X11 forwarding on VMM "some day" but that day didn´t arrive. IDK if that was even possible but this I now know work at least. Thanks for sharing! My main reason for running Linux on my work laptop is that I need to have Anydesk or Teamviewer with me (because users). To be honest I also need a laptop to also be able to automatically switch from suspend to hibernation after some time because weekends vs battery and my brain´s randomizing features of memory. Unrelated fact: There are very few distro´s that does "hibernation after sleep". If you are lazy and want it simple, Manjaro with KDE and OpenSuse leap KDE is the only two that does this with stability. Basically you need a swap partition larger than RAM, and KDE then has a GUI setting for it. And you need to sacrifice to the SystemD gods too and hope they didn´t randomly break this feature on your distro. And I guess you also want to have a "real" ThinkPad too, as usual.

[@TheOpenBSDguy]

I remember the days that I needed hibernation on Linux. It was a bit of pain back then, hope it improved since

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

@@TheOpenBSDguy Yep. It can very much be a pain. Redhat and the Systemd people thinks that hibernation is bad. Therefore they killed it a few versions ago and people who objected to it simply got "well use sleep then, problem solved". They might as well have recommended a banana or something. But fingers crossed, My OpenSUSE Leap with KDE on my 2020 Thinkpad T15 has been alright for over a year now. At this point I almost wonder if they rolled back systemd´s hibernation after sleep. I mean that´s a function that has been fundamental and default in Windows and MacOS since forever now. Removing it from Linux takes their precious market share back I guess.

[@fzzybash5915]

great vid! thank you...

[@chidaruma_]

And I've been using VNC to access my VMM machines. Thanks.

[@TheOpenBSDguy]

How is the performance compare to xephyr?

[@chidaruma_]

@@TheOpenBSDguy I think xephyr is more stable and more performant, I always felt like a bit of delay with VNC, and with xephyr it's a bit more faster.

[@TheOpenBSDguy]

@@chidaruma_ - thanks

[@kylewillett9817]

WOW! That was really cool OpenBSD Guy! Excited to try this out next chance I get. I wonder why it is so slow? Is there any way to run Linux only emulators or games in a VMM at near native speeds?

[@TheOpenBSDguy]

I guess a major part of it is VMM limitation. It runs on a single CPU core only and is not possible to allocate more CPUs to the VM. To run Linux programs and games at native speed, besides that GPU pass-through has to be added to VMM. Another idea (at least in theory) is to port FreeBSD Linux emulator to OpenBSD. How the code is tangled with kernel and all, I have no idea

[@therealchonk]

It should be possible to do it without Xephyr. You just have to figure out how to pass `-listen tcp` to the host's Xorg. Another remark: you only have to allow TCP connection to ports 6000..6010 from tap0, not every interface.

[@TheOpenBSDguy]

Yes I should have only allow tap0 on pf config. I believe using Xephyr over Xorg has the isolation advantage. How good? I am not sure though

[@scratchandgame]

I hope that I dont have to watch the video. Reading is faster

[@SergeRibalchenko]

these videos are not meant for us, it is made for illiterate stupid gen Z.