 So I've talked about this a couple times before, but recently I've been transitioning to doing all of my work and most of my computing actually inside of virtual machines. Now I've talked about why I've been doing this and it's still a transition, right? I'm not saying that if you use a virtual machine, you're going to be a private person and all of your data is going to be safe. That'd be pretty stupid and obviously there are way more steps to that process that I still need to go through myself and to cover on the channel. Over the course of the last five or six months or so, basically since the end of last year, I've been putting on a series of videos on becoming more private on the internet and one of my last steps that I've just taken and kind of been working through over the course of the last month is doing all of my work in VMs. Now, obviously, like I said, there's more to it than just that and I'm going to be talking about that in future videos. If you're interested in that kind of stuff, make sure you hit the subscribe button, hashtag YouTuber. What I wanted to talk about today are several tips for actually using VMs. Now, it doesn't matter why you're using a VM. If you're using it to be private like me or if you're using it for work or whatever, whatever reason you're using VMs, it doesn't really matter. These tips will apply to you. So, over the course of the last couple months or so, these are the things that I've kind of discovered as I've gone through this process. So I wanted to just put some tips out there and hopefully they'll give you some help if you're trying to use VMs a little bit more, you're using VMs for work or whatever. So let's go ahead and jump in with the first tip. The first one, and this is a doozy, is to learn SSH. Now, I've talked about SSH on this channel, on videos many times over the course of the last few weeks. Now, you probably think that I'm a little obsessed with SSH because it, you know, it hasn't been on my channel until now and now I'm talking about it all the damn time, but it is super important. Without SSH, I'd be having one hell of a time because a lot of times I'm in different VMs that I'm, you know, doing something else, but I need access to files that are on another VM or I'm needing files that are on my host machine or they're on my standing desk, they're on my laptop or whatever and the best way to have access to those files, especially if I don't need to transfer them is through SSH or if I do need to transfer them, there are other technologies based on SSH or similar to SSH that allow me to transfer them. So learning SSH and those tools has allowed me to have better access to my files, no matter where they're at. Before I started doing the whole VM thing, SSH was basically a foreign technology to me. I'd only used it very briefly back in like 2010 or something like that when I was jailbreaking iPhones, right? When you back then you had the SSH actually to jailbreak an iPhone and man, those were the days. Since then, I hadn't actually, you know, done any SSHing into anything. Like even when I switched to Linux, I had no real need to SSH. And even when I wanted to have my file shared between my computers, usually I would do that through a technology like Samba and everyone knows my opinion on Samba. So, you know how resistant I am to actually using that technology. So usually I would do with the old fashioned way if I had to transfer just one file and that'd be put it on a jump drive or a USB key and hop it on over to my other computer and do it that way. Like it's the, you know, the 90s or something. But SSH has completely changed that. It's made it so easy to have access to my files, no matter where they're stored. So if you're going to start using VMs for anything, learn SSH, it'll truly help you. So the next one on the list I think is fantastic and I'm glad that I discovered it, but it does, there is some caution here to be had. So let's talk about saved state VMs. So basically what saved state VMs are, and this is specific to KVM and VertManager and stuff like that. I'm not sure how you, I'm sure you can save state in virtual box. I've just never done it before. So don't quote me on that. But if you're using KVM or VertManager, you can be using your virtual machine and then save it in its current state, which means that it is preserved perfectly as it was shut down. So all of your windows are still there. All of your data is to open whatever it's all just saved exactly as it was. And then when you come back to it, you just pop right back to your point where you left off and you can carry on with your day. This is great for if the host machine has to be rebooted or if you're walking away or you're switching to a different VM or whatever, or you don't need that VM to have, you know, take up your resources for a little while so you can shut it down, but it not really shut it down. What you're doing is actually saving it. Now, like I said, the benefits to this are obvious. It means that you can have all of your stuff just there all the time, always open. Everyone knows that I don't close anything specifically tabs. So even in my VMs, I'm a tab hoarder. So I, you know, I may not sign into anything in the browser anymore inside of my VMs to start working towards the whole privacy thing. But I still hoard tabs like crazy, which, you know, probably fingerprints me pretty well. But that's beside the point. The idea here, though, is that by having my VMs in a safe state, when I turn them off, I can come back to everything just the way it was. And that's really cool. So the reason why I said there's some caution here is because sometimes safe state VMs don't come back the way you want them to. So you can't always rely on them. Now, this is a very rare occurrence. I haven't had this on every VM that I have safe state. So it's not like something that happens all the time. But specifically on distros like Ubuntu, for whatever reason, it does not like safe state VMs. It doesn't like like to be inside of a state, safe state VM. So you go back to an Ubuntu that has been saved, you know, saved. You know, for some reason just won't even launch half the time. And I don't know why. Maybe that's a good own problem. Maybe that's an Ubuntu problem. I don't know. Maybe it's just my karmic retribution for all the crap I've talked about. You know, over the years, I don't know. It just doesn't work as consistently on that particular distribution as you'd expect it to. Now, I haven't had no problems whatsoever using any other distributions. So it's possible that it's just an Ubuntu thing or it's just a good own thing. Because I don't use good own anywhere else. I'm right now, if you see here, I am actually using XFCE and this is inside of Arch Linux. So you can see that this is, you know, a standard Arch Linux VM. This is the main VM that I've been using since I stopped using Redcore. So I haven't had any issues with a safe state with this particular distro or any other distro other than Ubuntu. Now, another thing to caution you about when it comes to safe state VMs is just a minor thing. And that is that when you come back to a safe state, when you relaunch it, there's a good chance that the clock is going to be wrong. And I haven't discovered a way to fix that quite yet other than resinking the clock. And it's not even that big of a deal. But if you're using two factor authentication or you're using SSL websites, which is basically the entire Internet these days, certain things won't load. Two factor authentication won't work if your clock is wrong. So if you come back to a safe state and you discover the Internet's half broken, chances are it's because the clock is wrong. So just keep that in mind. When you come back to a safe state, sometimes the clock might be wrong. So the next thing on the list is clones. Now, this is not something that's going to be useful for everyone. A lot of people will just have, you know, one or two VMs or whatever. And they'll they'll just be happy with that. Or they'll have a whole bunch of VMs with their all based on different distros or windows or whatever, and that's the way they do it. Personally, when I find a VM that set up exactly the way I want it to, I usually make a clone of it because eventually I'm probably going to mess that up by tinkering with it, because of course I'm going to tinker with it. I'm a Linux user. So if I tinker with something and it breaks, I don't want to have to just delete the VM and start over again by having a clone, which is basically a backup of the of the VM. It allows me to go back and just kind of start over without having to deal with the consequences of my tinkering. It's also the best way to back up VMs in my opinion. You just give it a good old clone and you have a backup of your entire VM. And it's just a very good way of doing it. Now, obviously you have to worry about space and stuff like that. So you can't make a hundred clones or whatever. But you can use this as a functionality to save yourself some trouble. If you are a tinker, you can be testing your distributions in a VM, have two versions of that. And if you break one, you can always go back to the other. So clones are your friends. The next tip is that storage is important. Always make sure you allocate it enough storage. You probably more storage is better than less storage. And the reason why I say this is because it's while it is not impossible to go back retroactively and add storage space to your VMs. You can do it. It's not easy. It's not something that is recommended, but you can do it. It's just hard. So it's much better for you when you're setting up the VM to give it enough storage space so that you don't have to mess around with that later on. And because of the way VMs work, it doesn't mean that if you assign your VM 500 gigabytes, it's not going to take 500 gigabytes out of your host machine. That's not really not the way it works. It expands it over time as you use that space. And 500 just happens to be the limit. So don't worry about you could give it a terabyte. It's not going to immediately use that terabyte. It just means that that's the limit. So give your VMs as much storage as possible. That way you don't have to mess around with it later. If you turned out you didn't give it quite enough. Always err on giving it more storage. The next one isn't really a tip. It's more of a warning. And that is just be prepared for crappy video performance. If you're not passing through a GPU and you're just relying on the built in video memory that the VM is allocated, your video performance isn't going to be great. You'll probably be able to, you know, play movies or watch YouTube videos just fine, but you're not going to be doing much gaming. And, you know, that's just kind of the way it is also. And this is the bigger one. You're going to be sacrificing a lot of your like blur effects and animations and stuff inside of your desktop environment because that's just stuff just not either supported or not supported well inside of VMs because it's more focused on actually providing you performance for doing actual work. The frivolous stuff that comes with most desktop environments isn't important. Now you can set it up so that that stuff appears and will work. It's just never going to work as well as it would on bare metal. So just be prepared for that kind of stuff to be either broken or not there at all. Another tip slash warning is at least in my experience, be prepared for your mouse buttons not to work. And I'm not talking about the left and right buttons on your mouse. I'm more talking about anything that are extraneous. So function keys like this Alcon huge has. They don't work. Also, the back and forth buttons for like the browser, they just don't work. OK, so just be prepared that that's probably going to be the case. Now, I have been trying to figure out a workaround for this. I haven't quite got there yet. Maybe there is one. If you know of one to get the back and forth and function keys on a mouse hosted on the host machine, but through a VM, leave that in the comments section. Well, if you know how to get around that, that'd be great. I haven't found it yet, but just know that chances are if you have multiple buttons on your mouse, they may not work in a VM. So the next tip is more to do with the privacy aspect of VMs. And as I said in the video where I talked about moving all of my stuff to VMs, you know, a couple of months ago, it's a learning process for me. I'm still one of those people that's very new to caring about privacy. But one of the myths and one of the things that, you know, I mean, I didn't really believe it because I knew better, but it's still, you know, it was one of those things that prodded me into doing this in the first place, right? The myth that VMs are more private than using a browsing aspect on your main machine, right? It's not true. OK, it's it's not immediately true, I should say. There are a whole bunch of steps beyond just using a VM that you have to take in order to be more private things like using a VPN, making sure your browser is hardened. All of these things play a role in making yourself more secure. Just using a VM doesn't automatically mean you're suddenly safe from the Google data collection monster, right? You're still going to be fingerprinted. You're still going to have all your data out there unless you take an extra steps beyond just using a VM. So if you're like me and you're starting to use VMs because of the whole privacy aspect, just know that your journey does not end there. OK, and that's one of the things like I knew that, you know, instinctively, but the impetus to start using VMs was because of the privacy aspect. And that myth did play in my mind just a little bit because I knew that if you use a VM, you had the potential to be more private. But it does require more than just using a VM. The next tip on the list is to create yourself a minimal VM. And what I mean by minimal is a VM that has Linux installed on it that has just the applications you need for a specific task. So if you're going to use it for work for, let's just say you're a programmer of some kind, just install just install like a browser on it. And then, you know, VSCodium or whatever, you know, text editor you use, that's it. And then do your best on that machine to block out as many distractions as possible. So have certain plugins inside of Firefox that are enabled to keep you from browsing to places where you're not supposed to go, YouTube, cat videos, things like that. You don't need to see those things while you're doing work. So having a VM that is dedicated and minimal to just one certain task specifically work is something that I found to be enormously helpful because it's it's allowed me to block out a whole bunch of other stuff by having certain plugins in my browser. It keeps you from browsing other places, but also because all I have on there is VIM, basically, I just do all of my writing right inside of there. And it just it's basically like a gigantic focus mode, right? Like a lot of writers have focus mode built into their word processors or whatever. That's basically what this is. Only it's in a VM form. And the last one on the list is the most frivolous of them all. And that is to don't forget to customize your workspace. Just because it's a VM doesn't mean that it's always going to be disposable. You might use this VM for, you know, years or whatever. Or even if it's just months, even if it's just a couple of days, spend some time making it look like yours. You know, go through and make sure it has the wallpaper that you want. You know, customize the bar if you want. If you're going to go through and do a full theme or rice or whatever you want to call it, do that. I'm a big believer in ensuring that your workspace looks very nice because I think that that promotes a sense of belonging and productivity and stuff like that. So just because it's a VM doesn't mean that it is immune from being customized. Now, if you're someone who likes to theme your operating system, but you spend too much time on it, maybe you could have one or two VMs where those VMs aren't customized at all. And you just use those for being, you know, some place where it's just you do work and you don't have to worry about any of the other stuff, you know, that's possible. But I like customizing all my VMs and I don't spend nearly as much time on them. Like if I if you if you see my VM now, all I've done is, you know, move the bar to the bottom and change the GTK theme and change the wallpaper. That's really all I've done. I don't plan to do any more. It looks fine just as it is. But I have created this workspace and it makes me feel more productive because, you know, I've made it at least a little bit mine. So, yeah, customize your workspace. It'll make you feel better, even if it's just in the VM. So so those are the tips that I have so far on working in virtual machines all the time. Now, obviously, I'm still at the beginning of this journey. So maybe there'll be more as I go along on. I'll make videos on those things as well, because this is going to be a long project of me transitioning into doing this as my way of computing, because it's just something that I'm interested in trying out, honestly. And I'm pretty sure I surprised many people as well, because when I made that video a couple months ago or however long it's been, where I was talking about moving all my work into VMs, there were several comments saying like, yeah, you're never going to do this. You're never going to last very long. You're going to do it for, you know, a week or something like that. And you'll go right back to using your main machine. And honestly, I'm surprised at how well I've stuck with it. Yes, I still do a lot of browsing and stuff on my main machine. I will be I'll be fully frank with you. A lot of my stuff like discord and stuff I still have on my main machine. And I still spend a lot of time there, but I'm slowly transitioning to more and more of my browsing, more and more and more of my work inside of VMs. And I think it's about been two months. So I'm kind of sticking with it. I'm still in the process, but it's actually been a fairly good experience. So that is it for this video. If you have thoughts on any of these tips, you can leave those in the comment section below. You can follow me on Master Donor Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at Patreon.com slash The Linux Cast. Links for Liberapay and YouTube will be in the video description as well. If you want to support me there. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube. You guys are all absolutely amazing without you the channels or something. We're near where it is right now. So thank you so very, very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. You guys are all absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.