looking for good Vagrantfile for retina/HiDPI Ubuntu under VirtualBox 5

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Grant

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Aug 28, 2015, 4:21:08 PM8/28/15
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I have a MacBook Pro with a retina display and 8GB of RAM.  I want to run graphical apps in an Ubuntu VM under VirtualBox 5.  (Actually, the only graphical app I really care about is WebStorm.)  So far, I have been able to get xfce4 to work, but apps look ugly (jaggedy text with a greenish cast, for instance), and performance is distinctly worse than native.

Does anyone have a complete example of a Vagrantfile that sets everything up optimally to run graphical apps in an Ubuntu (or other Linux) VM under VirtualBox 5?

The number one thing I would like to solve is that I would like to get native resolution to work, and I have heard VirtualBox 5 makes this possible.  I have tried manually checking the "Use Unscaled HiDPI Output" option in VirtualBox, but when I do that maximizing the VirtualBox window does not maximize the rendered view inside, which makes this option useless.

Also, there seem to be a lot of different things that might need tuning for an optimum experience.  Paravirtualization, memory, vram, guest services parameters, fonts, getting rid of the space-wasting Ubuntu taskbar, audio (not a priority for me, but could be important for others...), maybe JVM parameters (and I suspect I should be using HotSpot for the best performance), ....  I have an idea how to do some of these things, but not all, and probably some are not helpful and other things again that I have not mentioned would be useful for me or others.

dragon788

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Oct 5, 2015, 11:26:02 AM10/5/15
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I'd highly suggest searching on Github for some of those terms like high dpi as there are many many Vagrant templates and I'm sure somebody has figured out how to make it look good. I don't own a Retina Mac but I would think having the vmtools installed is also important to get a better driver inside the VM.
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