Since I will need to run Linux on this device and will use Virtual Box or some other software, I am concerned about the ability of the Y processors to handle this task, since it can’t be considered a peak load, but will have to provide stable performance over a couple hours at a time. I have ordered the i7 model. Would it be possible for the lucky owners out there to do some testing on this and report here in this thread? I would appreciate it very much.
It simply depends on what you do in VirtualBox - you can have a VM open and have it idle and it’ll just run normally 
Fair enough…some light postgreSQL tests would of course be nice, but I just wanted to see if it is even possible to run the virtual box and use the shell without major input lag, since I even experience such issues on a normal core i5u laptop.
Just out of curiosity, why you want to use VB?
Windows10 has a builtin Linux subsystem (if you want / need to stay in Windows) or you install Linux natively.
From my experience the subsystem on win10 is only useful for executing some small shell scripts like sed/awk, and doesn’t really replace a full fledged linux distro running in a virtual box.
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The real question is does the Y-Series support the Intel CPU virtualization instructions?
If it does not, then you can’t run anything in Virtualbox, QEMU, VMWare etc…
As far as I know, only the i7 model supports vPro. Do you need more?
From this official source all Y Series Processors should support it
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It does.
Anyway, I’ve been using virtualisation software for a very long time: dedicated instructions are a relatively new thing. Software like VirtualBox or VMWare has been able to run virtualisation well before those instructions without any issue and I would be surprised if they made them a requirement before every processor supports them.
@Thospa
VT is what I’m referring to, not vPro.
@Filippo_Possenti
Have you tried running virtualization on an Atom? They don’t have VT. They won’t work. It isn’t included for cost reasons and for power conservation reasons.
The Y-Series isn’t really in SoC territory but if they wanted to keep the power requirements down, they may have sacrificed VT among other instructions.
The Y series is far from an atom. It’s basically a U processor but with a broader clock range, which allows for better burst mode and lower frequencies when needed. It’s just a low power U processor.
You can look up the full list of specs for any Intel processor at ark.intel.com
You can find the full specs of the V at https://eve-tech.com/pages/eve-v/
Bash for Windows is great, and I use it all the time, but sometimes I just need full force Linux (or virtual Windows to test things). VMs are always handy when I don’t want to dualboot or leave my OS. Also, at least with VMWare, dealing with drivers in linux is far easier than dual booting.
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For those of us less familiar with the intricacies of Linux, what is the difference between running a distro in Virtual Box and running one of the distros offered through the Windows store. You aren’t getting a UI on either of them (I believe) so is it just different ways of doing the same thing?
Running an OS (really any OS) in Virtual Box is running it as a virtual machine, same as VMWare which is my preferred software. Virtual Machines are basically a virtual computer running on your computer, hardware components are virtualized, BIOS/UEFI is virtualized, hard drive is virtualized, etc. These are all done a little differently, based on the virtualization software you use, but the general idea is the same.
In virtual machines you can install whatever you want, and it behaves like a physically separate computer. You can get full GUI and tools and updates and whatever else, completely independant of the host OS.
Windows subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu, openSUSE, SLES, and Fedora) is just a terminal, that is missing some features, has some issues, and is much harder to modify/control because it is tied in with the Windows OS. The kernel doesn’t really ‘boot’, I don’t know if you can recompile the kernel at all, it’s pretty weird altogether.
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The distros offered through the Windows store is most likely riddled with keyloggers and malware. Expect your internet traffic and history to be monitored if you use the Windows Store distros.
so… i saw a bunch of words but i’m too lazy to read - did anyone answer @Solidizzle’s question or should i try and boot up hyper-V?
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I don’t think anyone did it yet. So I would appreciate it very much if you could test it.
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Sure. from the use case you described, i’m getting impression that you just need it to not suck completely, so i’ll just mess around abit and let you know if it crashed a bunch of times. that ok?
One warning if you install Hyper-V (from personal experience), do NOT try and even start VirtualBox or VMware or anything else while Hyper-V is even INSTALLED. You can blue-screen windows that way (again, personal experience here). If you want to test Hyper-V, great, but just know you won’t be able to even TRY another virtualization program while it’s installed. It “holds on” to something even if no VMs are running. You need to completely remove the Hyper-V windows feature in order to run another VM solution.
This is in contrast to both VMware and VirtualBox, in that as long as no VMs (or their management interfaces presumably) are running, you can run the other, no problem. You can’t run both types of VMs at the same time (at least that didn’t work about 3 years ago, last time I tried that), but they’ll happily co-exist, which is sometimes useful if you are running Virtual Appliances that are only distributed in one form or the other.
Just an FYI for those thinking of trying the different VM back-ends.
I am testing a couple of virtual machines (via virtualbox) on my i5/8/256 V and they run all smoothly for what I a doing. One vm is Lubuntu running apache and some webprogramming tools. The other vm runs Win7ultimate. I do not see a significant lag compared to my Thinkpad Yoga i7/8/256. Sofar totally satisfied with the V.
Yes that is what I had in mind. Boot up time, as well as Input lag when using the Shell and execution Speed of some commands to see if it feels reasonably fast (without actually measuring those values)