Neville,
Okay. So machine RAM is allotted to VM. Got it.
Per my last post, we’ll do some research and wait for the VM for now.
I may need to see if there are firewall settings in Mint that need attention, I’ll ask @Rosika. I’ll also search specifically for that as a known issue as well as Linux (Mint) to Windows 11 usage setups.
Thanks so much,
Sheila
Hi Sheila, 
I´m afraid there´s nothing new I can contribute to this subject. Otherwise I would´ve done so by now.
As you seem to already have read the discussion here … that´s all I could come up with.
Well, for me it was a much simpler case. 2 Linux distros - both running Linux Lite.
It was just a matter of applying the correct firealld settings in order not to be forced to disable firewalld each time I use barrier…
For me it works perfectly. But your case is much more difficult, it seems. 
So sorry.
Many greetings fom Rosika 
P.S.:
I saw here that Linux Mint uses ufw as a firewall.
So you´d have to apply the firewall settings for that. It´s port 24800 which is used for barrier:
sudo ufw allow 24800/tcp
I found something.
There is a spice-guest-tools package available for Windows
I should install that in the w11 VM , and try again.
I know nothing about Linux firewall, but yesterday, when I could not get KDEConnect working, my search found a setting for the firewall:
sudo ufw allow 1714:1764/udp && sudo ufw allow 1714:1764/tcp sudo ufw reload
And that fixed the communication issue between my phone and desktop. Now I found a similar issue here that indicates Windows firewall must be off (mine has been on) not just allowing Barrier, which I had done.
Am just wondering if the suggestion in that forum stating to flush the ip tables in Mint has any relevance here.
Any thoughts on the suggestions in that article much appreciated.
Thanks,
Sheila
@nevj oh great. Let me know how it goes. Even if I can resolve the Barrier issue, I still want to look at this for only using Windows in a VM on Linux as previously discussed.
Thanks,
Sheila
@Rosika okay, for now, I think I have it fixed.
Using the same commands from yesterday to get KDEConnect through the firewall on Mint,
myviolinsings@mint-desktop:~$ sudo ufw allow 24800/udp
[sudo] password for myviolinsings:
Rule added
Rule added (v6)
myviolinsings@mint-desktop:~$ sudo ufw allow 24800/tcp
Rule added
Rule added (v6)
myviolinsings@mint-desktop:~$ sudo ufw reload
Firewall reloaded
Then I turned OFF W11 firewall. Made sure all settings in both client/server were correct (i.e., no SSL, Scroll lock checked in W11, etc.) then I reloaded Barrier on both and it immediately started working. My cursor moved from Linux to W11. Then I tested keyboard and copy/paste between the two and it worked as well.
I don’t have a lot of confidence at this point as it has worked in the past and then stopped working. Not sure why, if firewall was the issue, it ever worked to begin with. But I will keep using today and even reboot after any updates and ensure it continues to work.
If this was the fix, I cannot believe it was something this simple.
Thanks so much Rosika & Neville…when you think you cannot help, something as simple as you two have mentioned caused me to take the steps in the firewall and resolve this for now.
Fingers crossed,
Sheila
Just wanted to update that after reboot (and adding Barrier to autostart apps) on Mint it continues to work.
One thing to mention, I am on dual boot Kubuntu 23.04 & Linux Mint on server machine. When I went back into Kubuntu, where Barrier had also stopped working, I updated the firewall and found it was disabled, so enabled and added the rules for Barrier, but alas it did not work. I think it has to do with W11 cannot use the same barrier instance to connect to Linux Mint as Kubuntu–but that’s a whole 'nother issue. For now, I am not worried about that as I am extensively using Mint and only boot into Kubuntu to update every couple of days, or if I need something from an app there. But I may try running a second instance on W11 and set it up to communicate with Kubuntu Barrier and see what happens. It would be good to explore this option if for no other reason than to learn it is not possible.
Kudos
Sheila
Hi Shiela,
Half a result today.
Installed 2 things
virtio-win-0.1.215.iso
spice-guest-tools-latest.exe
Results:
Copy with mouse does not work
Copy with ctrlCctrlV works copying into the W11 VM, but not copying out of it.
Can drag and drop an image into VM ( it goes onto Desktop) see below
There is one image on the Desktop, and another I moved into the FileManager.
but
Can not drag and drop an image out of the VM, only in.
When I try to crtlC a slab of text in Edge, I get an HTML popup
Apart from that it runs like a tortoise and drives me mad with updates. 3 minutes to boot.
I will keep thinking, but I am out of ideas.
Maybe someone can advise us
Regards
Neville
@nevj well the controlV and copy/paste is not a killer item but I am worried about you saying it is slow even with 16gb ram. If we get it working to even have a Windows in VM, as long as it is not too slow to deal with, we can then deal with copy/paste. But slow is a killer item. Wondering about screenshot in W11 cause then we could always transfer the screenshot file to Linux. I assume, could be wrong, that file transfer would work either via my cloud storage or anydesk remote desktop app, but who knows.
Do you think W11 is slower than W10 or 7 would be? or is it just any windows OS causes the lag? I am assuming a VM with a different Linux OS would not be? Not sure I understand, but using an unsupported OS inside a VM does not have the typical security issues, say using W7?
I have not had time to research, will try to get to it today and see if others have any experience with Windows (any version) in a VM on Linux.
Thanks so much and maybe someone here on the forum can provide some insight.
Sheila
I found an article on itsfoss about installing W10 using VirtualBox and while the article did not give me anything new, the comments did. @abhishek talked about “guest additions” add on for things like using your printer inside the VM, etc. Is this an add-on you have run across? A lot of questions in comments seemed to have this as the resolution.
Window 10 in Virtual Box
I’ll keep looking.
Sheila
Neville,
Nevermind about the suggestion from itsfoss article, as I guess that is the same as “spice” which everyone agrees is necessary. I did find a discussion where the poster with slow Windows in VM has hardware close to mine and they chose a solution that worked. It may have nothing to do with your trial setup, but just in case:
Slow Windows in VM
Sheila
It may be my computer… it is 10 years old, a 2nd generation corei7 6x. It does have 64Gb of ram. I originally had a hard install of win 7 in this machine… it ran OK, but nothing like Linux. I can run 3 Linux VM’s simultaneously , plus the host, and it does not even blink.
So the lags must be Windows… I gave it 32Gb of ram, it used it all but it did not help.
I still have the win7 install CD… could try that in VM.
The lags are annoying , not impossible… eg click on the browser icon, get nothing, then click again and get 2 browsers. The updates are impossible… it took 2 hours to shutdown last night. I can compile Gentoo in less time than that.
I think you could conquer the communication issues , with persistance.
Another option would be to put Linux in VM inside Windows. You would have to use VirtualBox for that.
Yes, in Vbox, you have to add “guest additions” to every VM
I have used Vbox in Linux, with a Linux guest. I prefer qemu/kvm with virt-manager gui.
That is correct.
Do you know why ctrlC ctrlV does not work in Edge browser?
It works in a terminal window
That’s what I figured. It’s the reason I have taken 20 year old laptops of mine and just for a test, installed a “lite” Linux and saw it come to life again. You could never do that on Windows.
No, I’d rather just keep one computer for Windows until I retire (or find a job that doesn’t care how I get it done as long as I get it done). After using Linux and seeing the increase in performance from old to newer hardware, I could never go back to the ridiculous lag of updates, updates that kill hardware, etc. in Windows. The only reason I just bought the laptop with W11 is because you have to keep upgrading hardware to keep running Windows, especially 11 and MS tries to control everything you do in their environment, so for now, let’s just say Windows in a VM is not for the productive types…lol.
Thanks so much, Neville, for putting all this time and effort into it. It definitely answers my questions about running Windows in a VM just to play a few MS games.
Sheila
I do not use Edge except on stupid sites that refuse to work unless you are using it (like the Intel driver updater). But you made me realize something: I sometimes copy something in Windows and try to paste into my notebook app and sometimes it doesn’t work, especially images…not sure why. I just went over to Edge on W11, copied text from the intel site and it pasted with control V, though the formatting was different from using right-click paste. I copied an image with right-click copy and it would not paste into a note. But control v did work on a different image. There are too many variables to figure out the why’s…lol.
And THIS is why I hate MS.
Sheila
Not necessarily true… In fact I hardly ever install guest additions and I use VirtualBox all the time…
Nearly ALL modern Linux kernels are aware they’re in VBox… Same goes for VMware… you mostly hardly ever need to do this… VMware actually recommend using the O/S vendor version of vmtools, whether for guests on VMware workstation, or VMs hosted on farms of ESXi hosts… About the only time you might consider this is if your hypervisor offers graphics acceleration…
Note also - I’ve never had to install anything to get shared clipboard between guest and host, it just seems to work out of the box (but not necessarily for headless text mode consoles - but that’s to be expected - in those cases, I ssh in a terminal window to my VirtualBox VMs).
Also - VirtualBox has the option of shared folders, you can share a folder between your host (i.e. machine running VirtualBox) and your guest - should appear via SMB / Windows networking…
Also - one other point - that tinyW11 was actually designed / configured by some clever person who managed to get W11 to run in something tiny - like 256 MB of RAM or something… So - 16 GB sounds like overkill for a VM anyway… that’s why it’s called “Tiny W11” in the first place…
I have a VirtualBox guest which I built with that TinyW11 ISO - I’ve only allocated it 4 GB of RAM and 2 vCPU and it runs fine (not that I ever use it)…
Hi Shiela,
I think that is the best choice… especially now you have barrier working.
Keeps it simple… easy to manage, and probably best performance
It was a good learning exercise for me. Thank you for kind words
Regards
Neville
Yes it will run without guest additions. But I could never get a shared folder until I put guest additions in. Dint know about copy/paste… i never tried it in Vbox
I dont understand what is happening . When I run the VM it just grabs the max amount of ram I allow it. I went up to 32Gb and it did nothing for the performance, but it used it all.
Tinyw11 is 3Gb on the iso file. How big is the .vda file? Not sure how much extra it downloads when you update… You are right 4Gb ram should run. What is your performance like… are there lags when you click something?
My general view of windows is that it is just bad or lazy programming to require so much compute power to do so little real work. My recent experience has not changed that view.y
I gave it 54 GB (don’t ask me why that number - I just randomly assigned it some storage on my 1 TB SSD - I think the default that VBox suggests is 18 GB? Knowing the bloat that Windows likes to introduce, I think I tripled that value to 54 GB - was a couple months a go at least) - but it’s only consumed 9 GB of that - I’d imagine probably a tad more if I ran it for any length of time - but I haven’t booted it for months…
Note : I don’t run it usually - I just did it to see what it was like… When I found out I still needed to “activate” it just to change the wallpaper and display settings, I gave up. i.e. it wouldn’t even let me switch to dark mode, which I do everywhere I can - all that white space hurts my eyes…
