Rpi considerations

You do realise RPi is an ARM machine not an x86(_64) so VMs will also be ARM. Kubuntu + ARM doesn't seem to exist.

I've got a Pi5 8GB with a Pimoroni NVME Base, a 250GB NVME SSD and a RaspberryPi Active Cooler. RPi has a M.2 HAT now that would work fine too but I don't know if the Active Cooler will work with it. The active cooler is almost silent and unless I do something really CPU intensive it never speeds up to a speed where I can hear it (that could partially be because of 40 years of jet engines too :-)

It is running RPi OS bookworm. It is a light weight GUI similar to XFCE that I have on my desktop. It's really pretty snappy, much better than a Pi4. You can run Wayland or X11 if it matters to you.

Not sure why you would want a VM without multiple OSs installed? In any case if I want a full screen command line it is just <CTRL><ALT>F1 and the screen switches. You can set it up to boot into the command line if you want and then start the windowing system if you need it.

The Pi5 is almost to the point of really being a desktop replacement. Maybe when the Pi6 comes out.

if OP needs an x64 intel compatible - then look at ebay. And look for thin clients - usually fanless like this one It is a

ThinClient Fujitsu Futro S930 AMD Quad Core GX-424CC 2.4GHz 8GB 16GB + Power Supply

some sites compare cpu, and this is one example

No - I am not the seller, but I like the thin clients. I sometimes need a low power fanless intel machine, and these do the trick for me.

No I didn't and thanks for alerting me on that. I thought the VM's could specify architecture. I guess not.

I'll have to re-evaluate.

Thanks again.

Actually ARM Docker can run x86 images, but expect it to be sluggish.

-jw-

I use RPis in various ways but for my desktop and backup machines I use Fujitsu Esprimo Q957 and Q557, very small box with PSU and disk drives within in, power consumption about 5 watts so down in the same sort of area as the Pi.

I too am almost 100% command line but I do run a GUI, mostly for using the web browser.

Oops, should be Q556!

Debian is home to me and there is an ARM version so I'll likely go that route. Still evaluating.

It's not so much "almost silent", as totally silent. It is quite noisy when it spins up, it just that, under Pi OS, it doesn't spin up unless under extreme load.

Look at it, the reason the fan looks stationary, is because it is stationary. It's not a strobe effect. Stick something in it, if you don't believe me.

Me neither, but to each their own.

I think the rPi5 is a desktop replacement. Not a great standalone development work horse PC, but a simple desktop. Especially as the rPi5 has Remmina Remote Desktop client (RDP), which allows me to work on a powerful Windows PC.

Or issue this command:-

cat /sys/devices/platform/cooling_fan/hwmon/hwmon2/fan1_input

Which will give you the current fan speed rpm. If you want know how fast as a percentage it is read /sys/devices/platform/cooling_fan/hwmon/hwmon2/pwm1 and divide by 2.5

---druck

My gut feeling is, the cost of a Pi is so low, why not take the risk of buying it, trying it and seeing for yourself how it works out?

I think the later Pis (4 and 5) do support KVM now, which earlier ones didn't. However I don't think it's a road very well travelled, so there could be bumps.

With KVM you can run an Arm OS, but:

Pi OS images are designed to be relashed to a Pi SD card, so don't UEFI which is probably the way KVM/QEMU wants to boot them. There are generic Arm server images which probably will boot, and you can then install GUI packages. You won't get GPU acceleration as there's no idea of Pi GPU passthrough.

While there might be no Kubuntu image, that's easy to install on a standard Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop

The other limitation with Pis is the limited RAM, which might not be enough. Docker makes better use of RAM than VMs, and is a much more popular path.

TL:DR if you want an easy life go with Docker on Pi or VMs on x86. Other routes are more 'interesting'.

Theo (who should play with KVM on Pi4 sometime)

A useful source of Arm VM images is the UTM hypervisor for Apple Silicon Macs:

If you have a Mac, importing the VM into UTM will also tell you the flags it runs QEMU with, which could be handy for setting up video etc. The details are in the .plist file which would need transcribing to QEMU flags if you don't have a Mac.

(QEMU will also run the non-ARM64 images, just you have to run them via qemu-system-x86_64 or whatever, and they'll be emulated and slower)

Theo

That's what I did. It's enroute.

I also wanted opinions and experiences. Can't hurt to ask.

Note the difference between KVM and QEMU: KVM is the virtualization architecture built into the Linux kernel, which allows it to run virtual machines of the same architecture type as the physical hardware it’s on, using the virtualization capabilities of that same hardware.

QEMU is a collection of software emulators for a whole lot of different architectures, regardless of the actual hardware you run it on. It offers sufficient fidelity to the original hardware to support booting of OSes that were specifically written for that hardware. But being software- based, it will usually be slower than the actual hardware.

When QEMU is asked to emulate architecture X when the physical hardware is that same architecture X, then you can ask it to bring in KVM to run the emulated OS at something close to native hardware speed. Note this is not something that happens automatically, if you don’t ask for it.

Maybe compared to something second-hand that is 10 years old, and consumes

I think you're a bit behind the times there. PCs (as in x86_64 based) can now be found, even second hand, that consume only four or five watts. I have a number of Fujitsu Esprimo systems (Q557 and Q957) with power consumption down around five watts, I'm sure there are other manufacturers' systems similar. Refurbished Q556s can be bought for around £50 which compares pretty favourably with a Pi 5, plus case, plus power supply, etc.

I have several RPis as well, they have their uses.

Interesting, did you find somewhere online that told you this before buying one? The specs I find for them are just the power supply wattage (and even that can take a lot of hunting sometimes), which for the Fujitsu Esprimo Q557 is 65W. I tried to find details about idle power consumption for these mini desktop systems and never got anywhere, except for x86_64 SBCs, so I bought one of them instead (similar wattage to what you quote, but a slower CPU).

If there was a physical shop selling them nearby me I'd turn up there with a power meter in-hand. It's very frustrating that the manufacturers don't talk about it (though RPi don't either, users just happen to post their own measurements online in places I can find).