Slow response time with Gnome shell in Virtualbox fullscreen mode

Question

Today I installed Fedora 15 in a VBox VM to try out Gnome 3. After installing the guest extensions almost everything works fine. Except for the slow response time in fullscreen mode (HOST+F).

By that I mean textareas responding only after I've typed whole words, window dragging won't register etc.

However in maximized window mode everything runs smoothly.

Anyone have a similar experience? What can I do?

VirtualBox guest settings are as following.

• 1,5 GB RAM
• 1 CPU core (no limitations, 2,2Ghz host)
• 128 MB video memory
  • 3d accel enabled
  • 2d accel disabled (it says this is only for windows guests)
• rest is defaults

I also have a graphics card that uses nvidia's optimus technology but I doubt that this is the problem.

Host OS is Windows 7 Professional

Solution 1

You can solve this problem by right clicking on the VirtualBox menu item and selecting the "Run with nvidia graphics" option. I'm not exactly sure what it's called in the English version of Windows because I'm using a different language.

I have Optimus as well and I've had the same problem as you when I ran it with the Intel graphics. It appears to be a problem with the Optimus technology afterall.

Solution 2

If you are working in a VM environment you should activate graphics acceleration (like 3D). Gnome3 is known to be a resource intensive DE/Interface, so changing to a OS spin like xfce can save some trouble (and performance) (https://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce or https://xubuntu.org)

Comments

[Admin]

That solution is not helpful if battery life is important. I'd be perfectly happy with a disabled nvidia processor in the VM, if not for the issues with the intel.

[Pankaj Goyal]

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