Boot Kubuntu with only the Window Manager

[Guest]

Hi,

Forgive me if I'm using the wrong terminology regarding Window Manager/Desktop Environment.

Here's my scenario:
I wish to stream a service that uses Silverlight (Eurosport player). After some searching, it seems that Mono doesn't do the job, and that I'll have to bite the bullet and use MS Windows to watch. I'm reluctant to create a new partition and install Windows on my machine so I've decided to try and use VirtualBox.

As you can imagine, streaming video through a Virtual machine isn't great - can be a little choppy - but it is almost satisfactory!

What I would like to do/try is to boot Kubuntu into a minimal state where there is no desktop environment, but I am able to open graphical apps via the command line. I'm hoping that doing this will free some resources that can be transferred to boost the VM.

Any advice or comments on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[NickStone]

Not sure if you can only load the KDE window manager but if you just want a window manager replace KDE with Openbox.

[SteveRiley]

KDE (and KWin specifically) aren't the cause of the choppiness you see. You might need to give your VM more horsepower. Increase the number of cores, the amount of video RAM, and try enabling 3D acceleration for the guest. If you're NATing the network connection, switch to the virtio NIC. You'll need to Google around a bit to find the latest Windows guest drivers for that.

[dmeyer]

Hi,

Forgive me if I'm using the wrong terminology regarding Window Manager/Desktop Environment.

Here's my scenario:
I wish to stream a service that uses Silverlight (Eurosport player). After some searching, it seems that Mono doesn't do the job, and that I'll have to bite the bullet and use MS Windows to watch. I'm reluctant to create a new partition and install Windows on my machine so I've decided to try and use VirtualBox.

As you can imagine, streaming video through a Virtual machine isn't great - can be a little choppy - but it is almost satisfactory!

What I would like to do/try is to boot Kubuntu into a minimal state where there is no desktop environment, but I am able to open graphical apps via the command line. I'm hoping that doing this will free some resources that can be transferred to boost the VM.

Any advice or comments on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

SteveRiley is spot on. More ram, more CPU resources, enable 2D and 3D acceleration and don't forget to install the Vbox Guest Addons and the VirtualBox Extension Pack. When installing the Vbox Addons remember to tick enable 3D acceleration.

Now on a different note, have you thought of using the custom wine package that has a special Firefox and Silverlight which enables people to use Netflix.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop

Now run the program called netflix and see if your website works? It sounds like an odd way of going about it but its worth a try.