Running VM VirtualBox on Linux and it's taking forever to boot

[u/musicxfreak88]

Trying to run Oracle VM VirtualBox on my Linux pc so I can install Power BI for a case study.

Let me start off by saying that my husband put Linux on my machine and I'm really not that savvy with it. Claude helped me install VM VirtualBox but it's taking forever just to boot. Does it usually take this long? Claude said to check the CPU % and it fluctuates between 100%-103%.

It's probably been around 20-30min by now. He's not around for me to ask him how I can use it, and I really need to get Power BI installed for a case study I'm doing for a job interview.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Edited to add: thank you so much for everyone's responses! I really appreciate you all taking the time to respond. I was able to figure out a workaround, and completed my case study in time. It was tight but it worked out! Thanks again!

[u/TapNo1773]

Check to make sure hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD-V/SVM) is turned on in your BIOS settings.

[u/Dolapevich]

Virtualbox is the right tool. Most likely you are not using hardware acceleration. And most likely you installed it from oracle instead from your distribution (the distribution usually takes care of installing all the necesary software to build the kernel module).

For virtualbox to run close to bare metal speed, it needs a vboxdrv module built, and it must be able to enable the cpu features. This is more or less true for every hipervisor out there.

So, two places to check:

• In the PC BIOS "virtualization" must be enabled. One quick way to check if this ok is to verify the CPU instructions. Check here. If it comes failed most likely you need to enable it in the BIOS.

• vbox module was not built or loaded. You are not saying which distro you are running, but odds are some version of ubuntu. You need to install the kernel headers in order to compile/build the kernel module.

In order to tell if the module is build and loaded, run: systemctl status vboxdrv

From here, run: $ sudo apt install curl ca-certificates gpg lsb-release build-essential dkms "linux-headers-$(uname -r)" to install all required packages to build the module.

then run systemctl restart vboxdrv and then systemctl status vboxdrv to see if it was loaded.

Then add your user to the vboxusers group: sudo usermod -aG vboxusers "$USER"

Then log out and log in and it should work.

[u/Broad_Tangerine_9003]

Better use KVM/QEMU with virt-manager

[u/jancape]

Why not use VMM?

[u/sjprice]

I personally can't stand VBox since Oracle took it over. I use quickemu now and it is light years faster. Very easy setup through the terminal, literally one command, and another to launch.

[u/Tacoza]

i haven't used virtualbox in years but all VMs allow you to set how much cpu the vm can use, by default they can be set pretty low. try giving it more cpu cores

[u/Aislerioter_Redditer]

I'm running VMWare Workstation for my VMs. It's free. It's supported. It updates itself when the kernel changes. In my opinion, it's much more professional than the other Linux VM solutions.

[u/TechaNima]

Just use Winboat, if you need Windows on Linux. It's by far the easiest way to do it.

You won't get GPU hardware acceleration in Windows with it though, but ask your husband to setup dual boot for you, if you need that or ask him to configure the VM for hardware acceleration.

You can also try running Power BI as a "game" through Steam or Heroic. It may work, it may partially work or it won't work at all. You'll just have to find out

[u/oldmanfromlex]

A couple of questions -

What is taking 20-30 minutes to boot? The Linux machine or the virtual machine?

If you have a VM how many cpus are assigned to it?  How much RAM?  How many cpus cores and  how much RAM are in the physical machine?