On 02/24/13 16:48, Mark Filipak wrote:
Okay, here's my plan: Linux - Mainly for WWW browsing & email. Windows XP - For engineering applications & games - no networking at all. Either multiboot, or VMware player with Linux host/WinXP client. Comments? Advice? KISS.
My first step at multiboot was multiple OS's on one drive -- major PITA.My next step was one docking bay in the case and one caddy/ hard drive per OS -- much better. I've been hooked on docks/caddies ever since.
But, the dock/caddy solution stopped working when I starting using SATA3 -- lots of bus errors. So, those drives have to be mounted in the case and cabled to the motherboard/ controller.
I use the Debian branded versions of Firefox and Thunderbird on a Debian Squeeze i386 VM on VirtualBox on Debian Wheezy amd64 on an Intel i7-2600S and Intel DQ67SW. (I researched the CPU and motherboard carefully, and made sure they had all the HV/VM buzzwords at the desktop level.) Those applications work fine. But, when I tried video editing on a Windows 8 64-bit RP VM, it didn't work. I don't know if the problem was Windows, VirtualBox, or both. I can't predict how your Windows XP engineering applications and games would fare.
My latest thinking for two OS's would be two SATA3 SSD's inside the cas, one OS per SDD, and use the BIOS boot menu to choose.
HTH, David