Re: who uses dual boot? [was: How to start using a free OS]
Miles, I completely agree with you.
My doubts regarding a multi-boot Windows/Linux are related to beginners
who used Windows only for years.
When I switched from other computers to a PC I installed both, Windows
and Linux. I was a very experienced coder on other computers, so the
situation is different to a user who only used Windows before.
I've got FreeBSD and XP on my Linux machine installed, because I bought
a very expensive sound card that is recommended for Linux, but doesn't
work very good, so I needed to test the card with drivers for other OS,
to ensure that the card isn't broken.
First I installed FreeBSD. Using the sound card with FreeBSD already
showed that it's not broken, but the FreeBSD driver doesn't support the
sound card's hardware mixer, so I installed XP too, to be able to test
the complete sound card.
Since I won an iPad I need iTunes. Because wifi between Linux and the
iPad doesn't work, I really need iTunes, even if I would be willing to
use the Apple Cloud (but I'm not willing to use it). The needed iTunes
versions don't run on wine, so what I'm really using is XP as guest in
Virtual Box running on Linux. For FreeBSD (not the Debian port, the real
thing) it's the same, I don't boot it anymore, but I'm willing to use
Debian's FreeBSD as guest too, assumed I should have the time to figure
out how to install it, it didn't work until now.
$ ls -l VirtualBox\ VMs/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 rocketmouse rocketmouse 4096 Oct 16 15:18 debBSD
drwxr-xr-x 4 rocketmouse users 4096 Nov 12 11:34 winOS
During iOS updates VBox is a PITA, because I need to reconnect VBox's
virtual USB connection several times, I anyway never installed it to the
real XP install on my machine. I'm a Linux user and I e.g. write shell
scripts on the iPad, so it would be idiotic to reboot to Windows to copy
the scripts to a Linux install.
Booting different Linux on my machine, s something I do, while one of
those Linux is my "main" Linux. Those different Linux share Evolution's
email folder and VirtualBox's settings and .vdis. For Evolution I don't
have to take care about the version and the VirtualBox versions on
different Linux installs are synced to the same version.
I can't use Linux as guest, because I need those Linux installs for
real-time audio production. From time to time I test a distro in a
virtual machine, but while Vbox does a good job running a XP guest, it's
not always fun for Linux guests.
Resume:
To install other OSs IMO only is useful for software/hardware
development and to test bought hardware that does misbehave with Linux,
while it shouldn't.
To install several Linux is useful for special tuned, customized Linux,
that e.g. need real-time access to the real hardware and to test what
Linux does fit to one's needs on some hardware, but I experienced that
maintaining more than two Linux installs (real installs, not as guest)
is nearly impossible for me.
For any other reasons I always would use a virtual machine and run
another OS as guest.
Regards,
Ralf
PS: "Linux" in this context is for the kernel and user space, the
complete bundle.
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