MultiCharts: Trading Software for Automated Trading and Backtesting

I'm considering switching from Windows to Linux, and I'm hoping experienced Linux/VM users will chime in with some sage comments. I did a search and the last relevant discussion on this topic was 2014, maybe we can do an update on that. My biggest concern is the speed at which MC will run on a VM, and if there will be any impact on the real-time IQFeed data.

I started this process by first converting my Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen3 (i7-5600 2.6GHz 4 core, 8GB RAM, 250GB HD, Intel HD Graphics 5500) to Ubuntu 18.04. I've run Windows 10 with both VMWare and Gnome Boxes for VM software. Multicharts will run on both, but of course it is slow on this little laptop. I noticed jerky mouse movement and slightly slow screen refreshes. But in my very informal tests, the quote data seemed to come through just as fast as a non-VM version of Windows.

At some point I will convert my workstation to Ubuntu and see how it does. It is a much beefier machine (Asus WS X299 PRO/SE motherboard, Intel i9-7900 3.3GHz, 10 cores, 20 logical processors, 64GB RAM, Samsung 500GB 960 EVO M.2 SSD, nvidia quadro P2000). I would expect it to be much faster, but have no idea what performance change to expect.

My questions for others are:

1) Have you done this, and what was your experience?
2) Should I be considering a PCI passthrough setup to get native performance?

I have done this running KVM on Linux. Make sure that you use the native Nvidia drivers on the linux side and install the QEMU/VirtIO/Spice windows drivers. Performance was good but be aware of updates that can break things. You won't need PCI pass though.

While I did learn something in the process, I was very happy to move to Windows Server 2016. Linux is great for certain specific things but it has limitations. If you need to run Windows applications, the experience isn't better running them on a VM in Linux.

regards,

Alex

Thanks for your reply, Alex. I guess I didn't expect the experience to be better, just wondered if the end result would justify the hoop-jumping that would be needed. Sounds like you are back to Windows. Can you share why you use Windows Server 2016 rather than Home or Pro?

Hi TrendFirst,

I have a colocated server running Windows 2016. It made sense to have one locally as well. It is much lighter than Windows 10 but runs desktop applications the same way. It is quite minimalist which I like. I moved away from Linux after an update broke my KVM and prevented me from starting my VM's . Rather than spending a whole day trying to fix it, I wiped it and installed 2016. I will never regret doing that.

I'm running Linux on several other PCs, and it is so much easier to administer than the bloated Windows Home and Pro environment. MS invades your privacy, shoves whatever they want into your PC, and generally makes life difficult for someone that just wants an OS that is stable and runs day after day. I'm currently running a stripped down version of Windows Pro on my workstation, which I imagine MS will do their best to break/update at some point.

If you had turned off updates on your Linux system, would that have prevented the problem?

It sounds like you have hit upon something that works for you......less bloatware and I would assume more control over updates and other things that happen to your PC.

I would like to speed Optimization on my next computer. Any suggestions to increase the number of cores would be very appreciated. Is there anyway to run multiple mother boards? I assume VMWARE which I know absolutely nothing about. Please see my previous post: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=52009&p=132541&hilit=VMWARE#p132541