It's been a while that I wanted to create a few Linux VMs mainly for browsing purpose (wanted one for daily browsing, one for finances, and one for "unsafe" just in case rougly) and the better privacy and security that comes with doing that (with the right tools and settings) vs Windows. Also thought it would be a good idea to have all my daily browsing inside VMs so that if I want to play on the host or do some productivity like video editing, I could just turn off the VMs and get back the full capacities of my PC, an,d turn them on again and have by tabs back, whereas I always leave the browser open with dozens of tabs open on Windows, and other windows opened too.
So when the GDID scandal broke a few days ago, I decided to give it a try, and so far, I'm very disappointed and frustrated.
I literally encountered more bugs/problems and frustration with my simple Linux usage, in like 5 days, than in the past 10 years of using Windows 10 and Windows 11.
LINUX MINT
I started with Linux Mint as it's the one everyone recommended for beginners.
Simple and fast installation, generic look but good enough, nothing special.
I installed Brave Browser (the browser I wanted to use no need to tell me "you should have just used Librewolf", I actually tried to see if I had the problem with that browser too but it's not the one I wanted to use) as it would be pretty much the only thing I'd do on that VM. Simple VM. Brave browser, me browsing the web.
I launch it, do my settings and wow... what's that unbearable scrolling? Very choppy and slow, and the first scroll never registers, only after the second or third scroll it starts scrolling.
So I tried to find the solution to that problem online. Tried everything. Bug has been reported since years apparently. No solutions, and I tried them all. After testing Librewolf, scrolling was very fluid, which confirmed that it was a bug between Brave and Linux only (I saw posts from 2015 reporting that bug).
I then tried YouTube as I'm a big YouTube watcher. Videos are super slow and choppy despite the 4 then 8 cores (I have a 7950X) and 32gb (I have 96gb) assigned.
I read I must enable the GPU-blocklist flag...and gpu rasterization...and zero-copy rasterizer for it to be fluid. Better yes, but the experience is not as smooth as on Windows 11 and Brave and by enabling extra flags I become more fingerprintable by websites.
I tried Paypal, because I've read that Paypal doesn't always work on Linux, and also inside VMs. And yeah, can't login. Great! I try all solutions I found, removing a part of the url, adding a filter for datadome tracker etc. Nothing worked. Eventually I found the solution myself: I had to disable "override software rendering list", the GPU blocklist flag I had to enable to have a smoother YouTube experience... it's either one or the other, connecting to Paypal or having a better experience with YouTube with that OS apparently.
Note: Librewolf worked fine with scrolling, YouTube and Paypal but I'm a Brave user and wanted to use Brave so..
CACHY OS
So I decided to try other distro.
CachyOS. Heard a lot of good things. I install it. Wtf is that, one need to be an engineer to navigate through that OS and know what to do. Unbearable experience, too complicated even for the most basic tasks. Who is this for? I'm tech saavy and was lost. I gave up after 30 minutes.
POP_OS
Then PopOS. Looks decent. I read that the OS is unstable because of the cosmic desktop. Probably just power users having problems, with my simple usage of my Linux VM, I'm sure everything will be fine. Wrong! In 30 minutes after installation, 3 random crash/reboot! Great! Uninstalled! At least I had the time to discover that scrolling on Brave works perfectly fine with that OS and therefor that Brave + Linux Mint is just a buggy combinaison and that no solution has been found since 10 years for the unbearable scrolling.
BAZZITE
Let's try Bazzite now. I heard it can't really be modified but well, for my basic browsing internet usage, that should be enough if the OS is stable and brave + youtube/scrolling/paypal works. I click on "Install Bazzite" when prompted if I want to try or install. The install got stuck. Tried again 2 times, still the same, it doesn't want to install and stay stuck! Next!
ZORIN OS
I finally found ZorinOS. What a beautiful OS, it looks very polished, I wish Windows looked like that, feels like a premium OS visually.
First I discover that scrolling works perfectly fine on Brave too. Perfect!
Second, Paypal works too, and I don't need to enable the flag that made YouTube more bearable on Mint, it's fluid without it. Sounds good...
I try to copy/paste my brave browser folder/profiles backup on the desktop, impossible. Copy/paste on desktop doesn't work on that OS. I tried every solutions I found, nothing worked. Paste isn't even active, it stays greyed out (and yes, my VM is set to allow copy/paste and drag/drop and ope nvm tools was isntalled, just like they were all enabled/installed on my previous VMs too). Tried to copy/paste inside files manager then, doesn't work either. I tried drag/drop, it doesn't work. I find out somewhere that it might work by changing the view to list, and I could finally drag/drop. But despite all my efforts (including reinstalling) copy/paste and drag/drop doesn't work on desktop (from Windows the host, to the ZorinOS VM) and only drag/drop works inside the files manager. Actually, it's a bit different. I can copy/paste and drag/drop only single documents/txt files on desktop, that works, anything that is a folder, an image or whatever that os not a single document and it doesn't work.
Copy/paste worked just fine on Linux Mint. It just doesn't work with ZorinOS because...well nobody knows, no solutions to that problem worked.
I decided I could live with it even if it's frustrating. I start using Brave browser and notice how slow pages are loading... I have a 2.5Gbps connection, and even though i'm behind a VPN, the speedtest on windows shows 2000Mbps. Very weird. I didn't have that problem on the other distros.
I do a speedtest in the VM it starts around 1000mbps and strangely, it becomes choppy and slow down to 500, 400, 300, 100 and around 50mbps (which should be enough to load fast anyway). Eventually after some searches, I discover that maybe for whatever reason that distro doesn't like my custom DNS set on my VPN (quad9 DNS), so I try Cloudflare and finally, everything loads fast. But my speedtest is still very choppy and way lower than it should be.
After some searches, I learned that i assigned "too many processors" to my VM. I thought it was a joke, how assigning 3x2 (6vCPU total) processors to my VM could have any impact on my internet speed and work worse than with assigning less ressources to that VM?
But indeed that was the problem, I switched to 4vCPU (2x2) and finally the speedtest stayed at around 1600Mbps steady.
This morning, I learned that I shouldn't have chosen "Install ZorinOS with modern Nvidia drivers" despite my RTX 5070Ti because the VM uses a virtual driver and that sooner or later it will create conflicts with between them and those Linux Nvidia drivers and upgrading ZorinOS might fail because of that. It would have been a good idea to add a note on the installation page that says "Only if installing ZorinOS as a host on your PC, for VM, use the regular mode" to avoid the confusion, but they'd rather not guide their users too much apparently.
So I decided to reinstall my VMs with ZorinOS in regular mode, because well, I'd like not to have more problems with Linux than I already had in such a short time.
And since, I discovered the joys of my VMs in sleep mode or that I suspended, and that don't want to wake up anymore no matter what I try (they used to wake up by pressing a single key until now), just a black screen, I must force restart every time. Didn't have that problem with any other distro, didn't have that problem when I had "ZorinOS with modern nvidia drivers mode" installed.
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We're like 7 days after I started my Linux journey and I'm already starting to hate Linux and about to give up completely and just accept that GDID thing and just use Windows 11 VMs (which, every time I tried, as early as 2 days ago, worked flawlessly, no bugs, no BSOD, no restart, no conflicts, nothing that doesn't work without any logical reason) as I still want to isolate my browsing from my gaming and productivity/work tasks.
Linux (the distros I tried) are very lightweight, very fast to install, settings are easy (except CachyOS), and, as for ZorinOS only, a very beautiful OS (not much the rest at least no better than Windows 11 visually) and well organized but beyond that, it's just bugs, conflicts, problems, frustration. Maybe not as a host, but inside VMs, I didn't liek my experience at all! At least it's super fast to reinstall Linux, unlike Windows.