volumio-2.502-2018-10-31-x86.img on virtualbox

Hello all. I’m new to Volumio and wanted to take it for a spin on a VM before procuring a pi or other hardware. To start, I downloaded the x86/x64 image, converted the image to a VirtualBox VDI, and used it as the HDD for a new VM w/ the standard Debian 64-bit configuration, with 2GB reserved RAM and bridged networking.

At that point, the problem symptoms were:

  1. default screen of running VM showed a plain white screen, although cursor movements clearly were drawing. It was possible to bring up the Chrome kiosk-mode help screens via function keys. I think this is related to…
  2. web server didn’t seem to be running or listening (timeout from VM host, as well as localhost cURL on the Volumio guest)

Jumped over to tty1 and nosed around the systemd/journalctl logs; restarting the volumio systemd unit produced some optimistic-looking log entries, no clear errors, but also nothing to suggest listening on :80.

I then increased the VM’s memory to 4GB, and that seems to have cured things–quick startup, UI rather than white screen, although the UI seems a bit laggy at times, possibly related to import of a pretty substantial music library from a NAS. Is there anything else that ought to be adjusted at this point?

Don’t take the graphics speed and other technical VM issues too serious, depending on your final platform, responsiveness can be quite different.
I’ve been running Volumio on various x86 platforms and have not seen any performance issues yet, it even seems to run on 8-10 year old pc’s.

However, Chrome causing a laggy local UI is a known issues in certain cases, I have not been able to get my head around it yet, but must admit not having given it priority so far. I suspect missing 2D acceleration in Chrome, but have not followed it up. Suggestions are welcome.
Using the browser UI from a remote device does not have this issue.