isn't a keyboard just a serial device? ai/search said a serial port can be assigned to a virtual machine....i really hate going back to my usual refrain. if necessary, use adapters for a usb or din mouse to a db9 serial port, assign to the virtual machine, THEN plug in the mouse and per search/AI "The mousedev interface is also available for legacy applications that expect a PS/2-style mouse protocol. The system dynamically creates these device files when a mouse is plugged in, ensuring compatibility with both modern and older software." ditto, for keyboards And I thought I recalled seeing a game that talked about having two players, each with their own mouse or keyboard, playing against each other on one computer. many years ago. Can an I/O hardware address just be passed to a virtual machine, so the host does NOTHING to the data, doesn't buffer it (so no buffer overrun attack, etc), doesn't try to determine what kind of device it is, nothing except pass through to virtual machine? Now granted for that 400 gigabit network port, perhaps virtualization can't keep up with the interrupts and state switching to the guest, since the device cannot slow down, but I am not likely to have one on my home computer. (i checked, AI seems to think 400gb/s is the fastest currently available). Is there some committee somewhere I can make suggestions to bring virtualization up to the 20th (yes, 20th) century? including hardware upgrades to chips? truly independent channels in hardware that can be passed through to virtual machines and so make the host immune to any malware that exploits software unable to defend against incoming data violating protocols? Carey
On 09/15/2025 10:16 PM CDT Kevin Cozens via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2025-09-15 11:01, CAREY SCHUG via Talk wrote:
reminder again, this is to make it easier for a windows person to install linux but still have access to all their windows programs without having to boot back and forth all the time. try the linux version of some application, and compare it side by side with the windows version. Heck, even plug in two keyboards and have like two computers.
I don't know if a VM can be set to use a keyboard other than the main one used with the computer. It might depend on which VM you use. I haven't noticed a setting regarding use of a second keyboard in virtualbox.
I currently have two different installs of Windows that I can run using virtualbox. I looked in to whether virtualbox could use the install of Windows I have in a separate partition. It is supposed to be possible but it looked a bit complicated to set up.