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I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any special hardware recommendations for Workstation? The 'requirements[1]' drafted are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped down or built up to run *something* on most any modern machine. Workstation is a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get gnome-shell running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context you want Workstation to be used in.
Thoughts?
[1] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/20/html/Release_Notes/sect-Releas...
- -- - -- Pete Travis - Fedora Docs Project Leader - 'randomuser' on freenode - immanetize@fedoraproject.org
Hey Pete,
----- Original Message -----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any special hardware recommendations for Workstation? The 'requirements[1]' drafted are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped down or built up to run *something* on most any modern machine. Workstation is a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get gnome-shell running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context you want Workstation to be used in.
Thoughts?
Can we split that into a "minimum" and "recommended" variants?
The minimum would be what's mentioned in "minimum system configuration" plus the mention of "CPU accelerated graphics" and minimum resolution.
The recommended would be what's currently in "Minimum Hardware for Accelerated Desktops". Possibly with 2GB of RAM (so that integrated graphics don't impact us quite as much).
Does that make sense?
Cheers
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Bastien Nocera bnocera@redhat.com wrote:
Hey Pete,
----- Original Message -----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any special hardware recommendations for Workstation? The 'requirements[1]' drafted are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped down or built up to run *something* on most any modern machine. Workstation is a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get gnome-shell running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context you want Workstation to be used in.
Thoughts?
Can we split that into a "minimum" and "recommended" variants?
The minimum would be what's mentioned in "minimum system configuration" plus the mention of "CPU accelerated graphics" and minimum resolution.
The recommended would be what's currently in "Minimum Hardware for Accelerated Desktops". Possibly with 2GB of RAM (so that integrated graphics don't impact us quite as much).
Does that make sense?
Cheers
desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
Hey I think 2GB is a good "recommended" value, and that 1GB should be the "minimal". From my tests in VMs, 1GB is barely usable (I assume that 1GB on actual hardware with non-integrated graphics would be a bit faster, but still). However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa elad@fedoraproject.org wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to make the system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa elad@fedoraproject.org wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to make the system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
Running in a VM on a desktop is actually a very important usecase. We're targeting developers after all, developers might develop to our platform and test in a vm when running our platform or when running another platform.
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On 09/01/2014 09:30 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to
mailto:bruno@wolff.to> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org
mailto:elad@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the
minimal -
people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's
unavailable,
eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to
run our own
OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated
graphics" to be
in the recommended section. If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to
make the system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
Running in a VM on a desktop is actually a very important usecase.
We're targeting developers after all, developers might develop to our platform and test in a vm when running our platform or when running another platform.
-- -Elad Alfassa.
Virtualization opens an entirely different context for hardware requirements. QXL for guests hosted on my low power i3 utility server run gnome-shell quite acceptably; my i7 workstation brings that up to near-native for modern integrated graphics. Traditional cirrus type graphics deliver a wholly unusable experience on the same hardware. QXL isn't a magic bullet, though; on hosts with older hardware, performance definitely degrades. I don't have a lot of experience with VMWare or vbox stacks, but I assume there is a spectrum of unacceptable to adequate to excellent there as well.
Maybe some guidelines specifically for virtualized instances of Workstation would be a good idea. Recommend SPICE/QXL, with general guidelines for other solutions, ie "For best results using Fedora Workstation as a virtual machine, SPICE graphics with the QXL virtual graphics adapter are recommended [link to explanation]. Other virtualization solutions should provide adequate virtualized graphics hardware to ensure the best possible experience."
....and maybe something brief about how testing/development in a VM doesn't actually require a responsive desktop environment?
- -- - -- Pete Travis - Fedora Docs Project Leader - 'randomuser' on freenode - immanetize@fedoraproject.org
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Pete Travis lists@petetravis.com wrote:
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On 09/01/2014 09:30 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to mailto:bruno@wolff.to> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org <mailto:elad@fedoraproject.org>>wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in theminimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to makethe system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
Running in a VM on a desktop is actually a very important usecase. We're targeting developers after all, developers might develop to our platform and test in a vm when running our platform or when running another platform.
-- -Elad Alfassa.
Virtualization opens an entirely different context for hardware requirements. QXL for guests hosted on my low power i3 utility server run gnome-shell quite acceptably; my i7 workstation brings that up to near-native for modern integrated graphics. Traditional cirrus type graphics deliver a wholly unusable experience on the same hardware. QXL isn't a magic bullet, though; on hosts with older hardware, performance definitely degrades. I don't have a lot of experience with VMWare or vbox stacks, but I assume there is a spectrum of unacceptable to adequate to excellent there as well.
Maybe some guidelines specifically for virtualized instances of Workstation would be a good idea. Recommend SPICE/QXL, with general guidelines for other solutions, ie "For best results using Fedora Workstation as a virtual machine, SPICE graphics with the QXL virtual graphics adapter are recommended [link to explanation]. Other virtualization solutions should provide adequate virtualized graphics hardware to ensure the best possible experience."
Separate guidelines for VMs would be a good idea. I'm not sure I'd go into non-KVM setups though. I don't think we're realistically going to be able to 1) target those and 2) test them.
....and maybe something brief about how testing/development in a VM doesn't actually require a responsive desktop environment?
Er... that's somewhat confusing given we're talking about the Workstation product in a VM. I think we'd want to make a good impression of the product in a VM to entice people to install it on their real hardware. Having a responsive desktop for the "desktop" product is probably a high priority.
josh
On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 12:43 -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
Virtualization opens an entirely different context for hardware requirements. QXL for guests hosted on my low power i3 utility server run gnome-shell quite acceptably; my i7 workstation brings that up to near-native for modern integrated graphics. Traditional cirrus type graphics deliver a wholly unusable experience on the same hardware. QXL isn't a magic bullet, though; on hosts with older hardware, performance definitely degrades. I don't have a lot of experience with VMWare or vbox stacks, but I assume there is a spectrum of unacceptable to adequate to excellent there as well.
qxl actually is effectively just software rendering when applied to GNOME 3- it may be that there's something _worse_ than just software rendering going on with the cirrus driver - I'm not sure why it was so much worse for you.
In terms of performance with qxl, I don't immediately have numbers in a VM, but testing some of the tests that run on perf.gnome.org (*) with LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1, which triggers the same drawing paths as you get with qxl, I see:
# Time to redraw frame with a maximized application update applicationRedrawTime 2.9ms => 82.4ms # Time to redraw the main view, full screen mainViewRedrawTime 3.2ms => 21.8ms # Time to redraw the overview, full screen, 5 windows overviewRedrawTime 5.4ms => 37.0ms
This is with a 2560x1440 resolution - at a smaller resolution for the VM, the situation won't be as bad, but it's not really near native. Given development time to put into it, the applicationRedrawTime number can definitely be improved - there's a lot of extra copying of pixels around that isn't needed.
My experience with VBox is that the 3D support (which is off by default) has too many bugs when used with GNOME Shell to enable; software rendering performance seems similar to with KVM/qxl.
The general expectation for current behavior is that in a VM Fedora will be responsive, but not smooth. Many animations will automatically be turned off, which helps at making the lack of smoothness not be glaring.
The main extra requirement that you need to use Fedora Workstation in a VM is memory - trying to run Fedora Workstation in a VM with less than 4GB on the host is futile; I've never seen that work. Typically, machines with 4GB of memory have enough CPU to do OK with the graphics.
- Owen
(*) You can run these tests on F21 with:
gnome-shell-perf-tool --replace --perf=hwtest --extra-filter=Gedit
the numbers above have some not-yet-landed performance work for background redraws.
On Tue, 2014-09-02 at 13:34 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
The main extra requirement that you need to use Fedora Workstation in a VM is memory - trying to run Fedora Workstation in a VM with less than 4GB on the host is futile; I've never seen that work.
I can run Fedora in Boxes with a 3 GB host. I think it performs best with a 1.5 GB guest. It's a bit sluggish, but totally usable as long as the host isn't doing anything else. (Trying to run Boxes and a web browser in the host at the same time is a recipe for disaster.)
I've noticed that Boxes recommends 1 GB as the right amount of memory for a Fedora guest. This seems too low.
On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 12:18 AM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Tue, 2014-09-02 at 13:34 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
The main extra requirement that you need to use Fedora Workstation in a VM is memory - trying to run Fedora Workstation in a VM with less than 4GB on the host is futile; I've never seen that work.
I can run Fedora in Boxes with a 3 GB host. I think it performs best with a 1.5 GB guest. It's a bit sluggish, but totally usable as long as the host isn't doing anything else. (Trying to run Boxes and a web browser in the host at the same time is a recipe for disaster.)
I've noticed that Boxes recommends 1 GB as the right amount of memory for a Fedora guest. This seems too low.
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
Boxes recommends 1GB only if it can't identify the OS iirc
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa elad@fedoraproject.org wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to make the system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
I disagree. Testing Workstation in a VM before installing it is something we should very much care about. There are also cases where people want to use a VM for developing some new part of the stack and running Workstation as a VM to test that out is also very viable.
josh
On 9/2/2014 9:59 AM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 16:19:22 +0300, Elad Alfassa elad@fedoraproject.org wrote:
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal - people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform. I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics" to be in the recommended section.
If you are using software for graphics you need a powerful CPU to make the system usable. That is an odd combination on real hardware. So I think for a recommendation it makes sense to suggest hardware graphic acceleration for workstation. I think the running it as a VM on one's desktop is an outlier case.
I disagree. Testing Workstation in a VM before installing it is something we should very much care about. There are also cases where people want to use a VM for developing some new part of the stack and running Workstation as a VM to test that out is also very viable.
josh
Is it possible to add VirtualBox to workstation. I understand that t is free software and only the extensions are for personal use.
I have reboot from f21 Workstation into openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle)(x86_64) [1] which has VirtualBox 4.2.18_OSE r88780 installed by default (plus sugar 0.98.8)
To test f21-Alpha TC-5 .isos as I cannot load VirtualBox in f21 It would be much nicer to have VirtualBox in Workstation
[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensuse-edu/files/download/ISOs/openSUSE-Ed...
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Thomas Gilliard satellitgo@gmail.com wrote:
Is it possible to add VirtualBox to workstation. I understand that t is free software and only the extensions are for personal use.
No. We will not add VirtualBox. I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX.
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Elad Alfassa elad@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Thomas Gilliard satellitgo@gmail.com wrote:
Is it possible to add VirtualBox to workstation. I understand that t is free software and only the extensions are for personal use.
No. We will not add VirtualBox.
I'd agree with that.
I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX.
As Thomas said, the bulk of VirtualBox is actually GPLv2 now as of version 4 I think. The licensing may be acceptable for Fedora with that version or newer. However, VirtualBox requires out-of-tree kernel modules, which aren't allowed in Fedora and we aren't going to ship those. Packaging or testing this isn't something the WG is going to work on.
josh
Hi
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX.
GNOME Boxes certainly has a better UX however that by itself doesn't solve the needs of developers. As someone working on a role that requires me to use VirtualBox, let me quickly outline what my needs are to switch over
1 Should be able to import images in virtualbox format and able to import/export OVF/OVA format images
2) Should be usable with vagrant
3) I need to be able to distribute one VM image that will work across all major platforms
Rahul
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 8:59 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
Hi
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX.
GNOME Boxes certainly has a better UX however that by itself doesn't solve the needs of developers. As someone working on a role that requires me to use VirtualBox, let me quickly outline what my needs are to switch over
1 Should be able to import images in virtualbox format and able to import/export OVF/OVA format images
Should be usable with vagrant
I need to be able to distribute one VM image that will work across all
major platforms
Rahul
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
Hi
GNOME Boxes upstream developers are aware importing / exporting is super-useful and are working on it. You'll probably see it as a feature in Fedora 22.
Regarding vagrant, I don't have any experience with that myself, but if it's open source you could theoretically port that to libvirt.
Fedora 21 is just the start of Workstation, and I'm sure we'll work in the future to improve those developer usecases of testing in VMs and containers.
On Tue, Sep 02, 2014 at 09:04:05PM +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
Regarding vagrant, I don't have any experience with that myself, but if it's open source you could theoretically port that to libvirt.
There is, in fact, a libvirt driver for it. (As well as a separate KVM driver.) But it doesn't work flawlessly, as I understand it, and perhaps more crucially, vagrant involves a bunch of ruby and therefore packaging work that no one has gotten all untangled.
Hi
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
There is, in fact, a libvirt driver for it. (As well as a separate KVM driver.) But it doesn't work flawlessly, as I understand it, and perhaps more crucially, vagrant involves a bunch of ruby and therefore packaging work that no one has gotten all untangled.
FWIW, vagrant more often than not is used in combination with VirtualBox and there is enough bugs that one needs to be aware of while working with them (in my experience, networking in particular can be tricky) and I would love to use it with a libvirt backend if it was available in Fedora since it bound to be a more robust experience. Anything that one can use to script the entire process of creating and configuring a VM in GNOME boxes would be useful as an alternative.
Rahul
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 8:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
Hi
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
There is, in fact, a libvirt driver for it. (As well as a separate KVM driver.) But it doesn't work flawlessly, as I understand it, and perhaps more crucially, vagrant involves a bunch of ruby and therefore packaging work that no one has gotten all untangled.
FWIW, vagrant more often than not is used in combination with VirtualBox and there is enough bugs that one needs to be aware of while working with them (in my experience, networking in particular can be tricky) and I would love to use it with a libvirt backend if it was available in Fedora since it bound to be a more robust experience. Anything that one can use to script the entire process of creating and configuring a VM in GNOME boxes would be useful as an alternative.
Agreed that there are many pitfalls. This[1] is a useful blog. But there are plenty of ways to get lost with the vagrant-libvirt plugin[2]. One of the restrictions of the vagrant-kvm plugin[3] is that only a single VM appears to be supported.
1. http://ttboj.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/vagrant-on-fedora-with-libvirt-reprise... 2. https://github.com/pradels/vagrant-libvirt 3. https://github.com/adrahon/vagrant-kvm -- Oisin "Ush" Feeley
On Tue, 2014-09-02 at 13:59 -0400, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Elad Alfassa wrote: I don't think it's even packaged in Fedora due to licensing issue, and besides our virtualization platform is much more powerful, and our virtualization client app (GNOME Boxes) has a much superior UX.
GNOME Boxes certainly has a better UX however that by itself doesn't solve the needs of developers. As someone working on a role that requires me to use VirtualBox, let me quickly outline what my needs are to switch over
1 Should be able to import images in virtualbox format and able to import/export OVF/OVA format images
Good list! I've added the existing bug for ovf import to the workstation task list.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 09/01/2014 07:19 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Bastien Nocera <bnocera@redhat.com
mailto:bnocera@redhat.com> wrote:
Hey Pete, ----- Original Message ----- > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any special > hardware recommendations for Workstation? The 'requirements[1]'
drafted
> are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped down or > built up to run *something* on most any modern machine.
Workstation is
> a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get
gnome-shell
> running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context
you want
> Workstation to be used in. > > Thoughts? Can we split that into a "minimum" and "recommended" variants? The minimum would be what's mentioned in "minimum system
configuration" plus the
mention of "CPU accelerated graphics" and minimum resolution. The recommended would be what's currently in "Minimum Hardware for
Accelerated Desktops".
Possibly with 2GB of RAM (so that integrated graphics don't impact
us quite as much).
Does that make sense? Cheers -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
mailto:desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktopHey I think 2GB is a good "recommended" value, and that 1GB should be the
"minimal". From my tests in VMs, 1GB is barely usable (I assume that 1GB on actual hardware with non-integrated graphics would be a bit faster, but still).
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal -
people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform.
I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics"
to be in the recommended section.
-- -Elad Alfassa.
When I was originally drafting the Hardware Requirements copy, I tried to stay away from the minimum/recommended distinction. It isn't easy to draw a line and say "on this side you will have a great experience, and on this side you will have a merely functional experience, and across this other line it probably won't run at all." I think users can generally understand "more is better", and make an appropriate judgment based on explanation of the factors involved and available options. Following that line of thinking, we could say *suggest* at least 2GB of RAM, with a caveat that less RAM might be a compromise some could find acceptable, and more RAM would be better.
WRT the actual figure, systems that are preconfigured with 2GB of RAM are probably going to be mid/high Pentium 4 era systems, or low/mid range Core2Dou era systems with i915 -ie 4 years or more out of production. A suggest/recommend of 4GB RAM would put you in the area of modern low-end systems and older mid/high end systems. Looking at RAM in isolation, 4GB is probably excessive, but the class of system that comes with <4GB OOTB may generally not be able to deliver an "acceptable" experience.
Just food for thought - the stated hardware recommendations for Workstation can of course be whatever the Workstation group deems appropriate.
KVM/QXL/Spice is effectively hardware acceleration; I'll elaborate on that further in the thread.
- -- - -- Pete Travis - Fedora Docs Project Leader - 'randomuser' on freenode - immanetize@fedoraproject.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 09/01/2014 02:22 PM, Pete Travis wrote:
On 09/01/2014 07:19 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Bastien Nocera <bnocera@redhat.com
mailto:bnocera@redhat.com> wrote:
Hey Pete,
----- Original Message -----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any special hardware recommendations for Workstation? The 'requirements[1]'
drafted
are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped down or built up to run *something* on most any modern machine.
Workstation is
a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get
gnome-shell
running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context
you want
Workstation to be used in.
Thoughts?
Can we split that into a "minimum" and "recommended" variants?
The minimum would be what's mentioned in "minimum system
configuration" plus the
mention of "CPU accelerated graphics" and minimum resolution.
The recommended would be what's currently in "Minimum Hardware for
Accelerated Desktops".
Possibly with 2GB of RAM (so that integrated graphics don't impact
us quite as much).
Does that make sense?
Cheers -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
mailto:desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
Hey I think 2GB is a good "recommended" value, and that 1GB should be the
"minimal". From my tests in VMs, 1GB is barely usable (I assume that 1GB on actual hardware with non-integrated graphics would be a bit faster, but still).
However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the minimal -
people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform.
I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated graphics"
to be in the recommended section.
-- -Elad Alfassa.
When I was originally drafting the Hardware Requirements copy, I tried to stay away from the minimum/recommended distinction. It isn't easy to draw a line and say "on this side you will have a great experience, and on this side you will have a merely functional experience, and across this other line it probably won't run at all." I think users can generally understand "more is better", and make an appropriate judgment based on explanation of the factors involved and available options. Following that line of thinking, we could say *suggest* at least 2GB of RAM, with a caveat that less RAM might be a compromise some could find acceptable, and more RAM would be better.
WRT the actual figure, systems that are preconfigured with 2GB of RAM are probably going to be mid/high Pentium 4 era systems, or low/mid range Core2Dou era systems with i915 -ie 4 years or more out of production. A suggest/recommend of 4GB RAM would put you in the area of modern low-end systems and older mid/high end systems. Looking at RAM in isolation, 4GB is probably excessive, but the class of system that comes with <4GB OOTB may generally not be able to deliver an "acceptable" experience.
Just food for thought - the stated hardware recommendations for Workstation can of course be whatever the Workstation group deems appropriate.
KVM/QXL/Spice is effectively hardware acceleration; I'll elaborate on that further in the thread.
The other thing to take into consideration is for both the live media and netinstalls, a lot of the actual installation process is going to take place inside a ramdisk. I know someone testing Alpha TC4 failed to install Workstation on a 1GB VM[1]. So that tells me that 1GB is probably NOT the minimal requirement.
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1134524#c5
On Tue, Sep 02, 2014 at 08:22:24AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
The other thing to take into consideration is for both the live media and netinstalls, a lot of the actual installation process is going to take place inside a ramdisk. I know someone testing Alpha TC4 failed to install Workstation on a 1GB VM[1]. So that tells me that 1GB is probably NOT the minimal requirement.
This occurs very frequently in pre-release state. It's not supposed to happen for release images though. They should install fine with 1 GiB (and did so in the past). I think we should keep it that way.
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 2:22 PM, Pete Travis lists@petetravis.com wrote:
When I was originally drafting the Hardware Requirements copy, I tried to stay away from the minimum/recommended distinction. It isn't easy to draw a line and say "on this side you will have a great experience, and on this side you will have a merely functional experience, and across this other line it probably won't run at all." I think users can generally understand "more is better", and make an appropriate judgment based on explanation of the factors involved and available options. Following that line of thinking, we could say *suggest* at least 2GB of RAM, with a caveat that less RAM might be a compromise some could find acceptable, and more RAM would be better.
WRT the actual figure, systems that are preconfigured with 2GB of RAM are probably going to be mid/high Pentium 4 era systems, or low/mid range Core2Dou era systems with i915 -ie 4 years or more out of production. A
I don't think we want to encourage installing Workstation on any 32-bit platform.
josh
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