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I recently set up Ubuntu 12.04 as a guest system running inside Windows 8 using the free VMware player. Everything is working fine, but things are running pretty slow. I use GNU Emacs 23 to write code, but the program really drags. I've tried all the simple fixes I found, like installing VMware Tools, or running it in full screen.

I have 8GB of RAM, and I've assigned 3GB to the virtual machine as well as two cores of my i7 processor, which I think should be more than enough. I'm looking for more solutions to really speed it up, not just small improvements here and there. If anyone answering could use simple English, I would be really grateful, because I don't have too much experience with these things and a simple, step-by-step explanation to help me would be much appreciated.

kreesh
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You mention "full screen", so I guess you're running a full desktop version of Ubuntu.

I would guess that the window manager is trying to do some fancy graphical things which either your hardware doesn't support or, more likely, VMWare doesn't integrate with.

So change to a bare-bones window manager in Ubuntu would be suggestion #1.

An even better idea would be to run Ubuntu Server instead of the desktop version, though.

You can install an X server on Windows (Cygwin's has always been reliable for me, although I've never used Windows 8), and that gives you a local display for X applications running in the guest OS.

That's probably less detail than you were after, but hopefully it gets you started.

This answer might help with a couple of the details, although most of the information is not directly relevant: Using tramp with EmacsW32 and cygwin, possible?

I guess the main points are:

  • Set up ssh access on your guest OS
  • Install Cygwin on your Windows host with at least X.Org, XTerm, and ssh
  • Start the X Server (use startxwin if doing it from the command line)
  • Open an xterm and ssh to your guest OS, using X forwarding (ssh -X or ssh -Y)
  • Run emacs
  • Profit!
Community
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phils
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Have you tried installing the latest vmware tools?

bruceg
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