[ComputerGuru]

This is really cool, starred right try out at a later date.

Question: what does GUI virtualization actually mean? Does that mean the OS runs windowed in your existing DE? I’m guessing that means no HW acceleration. Is it possible to selectively pass through the GPU for a KVM-esque experience?

[elliotkillick]

By GUI virtualization, I was referring to the way Qubes handles receiving graphical updates (e.g. windows) from the VM and sending events (e.g. mouse clicks) to the VM. The Qubes GUI protocol is like VNC or RDP but much, much more secure: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/gui/

No HW acceleration by default as of now. It's possible to passthrough a GPU to the Windows VM in order to get acceleration, although, you risk exposing complex hardware directly to the VM which comes with many security implications: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/device-handling-security/#pci-s...

Note that in practice, passthrough works best with AMD GPUs; I've heard few reports of success with Nvidia GPUs.