It happens to work but is not really supported. Mouse is super laggy, there are no guest additions and last time I checked it used a full CPU core at all times.
You just don't get accelerated graphics or USB sharing.
Every OS that has to use VESA in a VM is slow. It doesn't mean they're "unsupported". Unsupported would imply that the OS doesn't boot/function properly or that you have to do abnormal things to get it to work.
It's not like Oracle offers some sort of guarantee that your Windows 7 guest will function or offer support if you have issues.
Actually, that is not necessarily true. If properly done, VESA is just a large shared memory framebuffer which is practically as fast as you can get on a VM, barring 3D acceleration which the GUI of 9x doesn't really benefit from.
Heck, for a fun experiment, Haiku on _real hardware_ using "VESA" (actually, the EFI GOP) beats the shit out of Windows 11 with accelerated GPU drivers. Even dragging windows around feels much faster in Haiku. Obviously 3D is going to be a problem, but...
Sorry, I said "a VM" when I should have said "VirtualBox". VBox just has a suboptimal VESA implementation. And I overloaded non-accelerated into that for simplicity's sake.
Qemu shows that VESA/SVGA drivers can perform decently, the VBox team just hasn't prioritized making them do so. But the point stands that a non-accelerated video option will perform worse than an accelerated one for all VMs for anything but the simplest of blitting pipelines.
What do you mean? The VBox VESA BIOS is buggy? (There's not much else in a "VESA implementation") I really don't think that's the case. It is a bit slower than VMware, but never felt ridiculously so. And definitely qemu feels slower, and IMHO has a much worse and less compatible implementation (yes, the VBox BIOS forks from qemu, but at a point where qemu cared a bit more about retro-compatibility than nowadays). At worst I'd argue they are practically the same implementation.
But the point stands that a non-accelerated video option will perform worse than an accelerated one for all VMs for anything but the simplest of blitting pipelines.
That's why I put the example that Haiku on a completely not accelerated framebuffer performs miles better than Windows 11 on an accelerated 2 year old GPU. The GUI parts only, of course. Try it. It's just insane difference. And yes I do have 5k screens..
For 9x, even if it actually supported 2D acceleration, newer cards seem to do a terrible job at it.
You are exaggerating a lot. Windows 9x works perfectly fine, and is much faster than on emulators. You can even use USB tablet emulation to get as good as it gets mouse support.
What does "supported" mean? Are you a paying Oracle customer? Because otherwise _nothing_ is supported.
If you pay them, they for example support several 9x era hardware (like the SB16).
Comments
It happens to work but is not really supported. Mouse is super laggy, there are no guest additions and last time I checked it used a full CPU core at all times.
Thus:
Every OS that has to use VESA in a VM is slow. It doesn't mean they're "unsupported". Unsupported would imply that the OS doesn't boot/function properly or that you have to do abnormal things to get it to work.
It's not like Oracle offers some sort of guarantee that your Windows 7 guest will function or offer support if you have issues.
Actually, that is not necessarily true. If properly done, VESA is just a large shared memory framebuffer which is practically as fast as you can get on a VM, barring 3D acceleration which the GUI of 9x doesn't really benefit from.
Heck, for a fun experiment, Haiku on _real hardware_ using "VESA" (actually, the EFI GOP) beats the shit out of Windows 11 with accelerated GPU drivers. Even dragging windows around feels much faster in Haiku. Obviously 3D is going to be a problem, but...
Sorry, I said "a VM" when I should have said "VirtualBox". VBox just has a suboptimal VESA implementation. And I overloaded non-accelerated into that for simplicity's sake.
Qemu shows that VESA/SVGA drivers can perform decently, the VBox team just hasn't prioritized making them do so. But the point stands that a non-accelerated video option will perform worse than an accelerated one for all VMs for anything but the simplest of blitting pipelines.
What do you mean? The VBox VESA BIOS is buggy? (There's not much else in a "VESA implementation") I really don't think that's the case. It is a bit slower than VMware, but never felt ridiculously so. And definitely qemu feels slower, and IMHO has a much worse and less compatible implementation (yes, the VBox BIOS forks from qemu, but at a point where qemu cared a bit more about retro-compatibility than nowadays). At worst I'd argue they are practically the same implementation.
That's why I put the example that Haiku on a completely not accelerated framebuffer performs miles better than Windows 11 on an accelerated 2 year old GPU. The GUI parts only, of course. Try it. It's just insane difference. And yes I do have 5k screens..
For 9x, even if it actually supported 2D acceleration, newer cards seem to do a terrible job at it.
You are exaggerating a lot. Windows 9x works perfectly fine, and is much faster than on emulators. You can even use USB tablet emulation to get as good as it gets mouse support.
What does "supported" mean? Are you a paying Oracle customer? Because otherwise _nothing_ is supported.
If you pay them, they for example support several 9x era hardware (like the SB16).