Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rolandr 3836 days ago
OK - I will deny it, just by the simple fact that for the last 6 months I have used Qubes exclusively, including daily use of MS Office 2013 (and more recently Office 2016) for work within a Windows 7 HVM (I have not opted to use the Qubes Windows tools yet). The experience has been entirely satisfactory, and I have not regretted it. I assume that if Office does make use of DirectX, there is a software rendering pipeline fallback that works fine (but perhaps not at 200 fps). For convenience, I have also used Inkscape and Gimp - other content creation software, I suppose - within the Windows HVM session without any problems. At one point, I even made use of a professional level parametric CAD software package within an HVM session - it worked, even if admittedly it would had some fancier rendering options available with a dedicated GPU.

Your complaints about lack of 3D acceleration seem to reflect your personal preferences, and are not an actual requirement for making use of MS Office or many other software packages. My six months of production level use provides simple proof by existence. There are some things - games included - that do need something like GPU passthrough, but your view of the situation is either outdated or simply wrong.