Ubuntu or other Linux distributions may be slow when you run it within VirtualBox. Often, the cause is that not enough RAM is assigned to the virtual machine, which makes it run slow and makes it unresponsive. However, if your VM already has plenty of RAM and you also already tried assigning an extra virtual CPU core to the machine, this guide might help you make Ubuntu faster in Oracle VM VirtualBox.
Execute the following command to see if 3D acceleration is being used or not:
It will probably say:
- First, shut off your VM. Then, right-click on it in the VirtualBox UI, bring up the right-click menu, and select the “Settings” option. Inside settings, find “Display” and click on it with the mouse. Locate the “Video Memory” slider and set it to 128 MB.
- Set the File size will be set to 10.00GB to give the Ubuntu file enough space to work with, the Hard disk file type to VDI to make an image formatted for VirtualBox, and allow the Storage on.
Now that’s bad news, because the graphical interface of Ubuntu makes your whole system slow and laggy. So first of all, make sure you have the VirtualBox Guest additions installed.
Once this is installed, we now install the vboxvideo driver:
In fact, the problem is not that the Ubuntu guest system is slow, the problem is that the Ubuntu guest system became slow after the Additions install. Menu display is really slow, selection is really hard, I have to wait 1/2 seconde on terminal after each keypress to see it displayed. While it was not. Installing Ubuntu 18.04 On Mac OS with VirtualBox This is a very basic walkthrough tutorial on how to install Ubuntu 18.04, or different Linux Distributions, on your Mac OS using Virtual Box. It’s very important to note that at the time of writing this, it is July 2019 and these steps might differ as different versions of VirtualBox. I'm happily using VirtualBox on a MacBook Pro with Retina display. However, ever since the release of VirtualBox 4.2 moving windows in a guest OS is very slow, i.e. The movement of the window is considerably lagging behind the pointer movement up to a degree where it gets unusable.
Now, shutdown Ubuntu. Then, you open the settings of your virtual Ubuntu and you go to ‘Display‘. Now tick ‘Enable 3D Acceleration‘.
Start your (formerly) slow Ubuntu and you should notice faster navigation, opening of apps as well as an overall snappier experience!
Installing Virtualbox On Mac
If you really want to speed things up even further, you can install the CompizConfig Settings Manager. To install and run it, open Terminal and execute this command:
Virtualbox For Mac
Go to OpenGL and untick Framebuffer Object. Also, you might want to disable effects, such as fading windows, animations and window decoration.