Re: dual boot or windows vm?
On Mon, 26 May 2025 15:23:32 -0400
Lee <ler762@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 26, 2025 at 2:38 PM Joe wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 26 May 2025 14:23:04 -0400
> > Lee wrote:
> >
> > > For those of you that still use Windows, do you have a dual boot
> > > system where you select linux or windows at boot time or do you
> > > boot into linux and run windows as a vm?
> > >
> > > My wife is trying to decide if she wants to keep windows on her
> > > laptop or no. Obviously, it's easier not to decide & keep her
> > > options open.. but I don't know if dual boot or running windows
> > > in a vm would be better, or what the tradeoffs would be.
> > >
> > > Anyone care to say which is the better option, tradeoffs,
> > > pitfalls, etc?
> > >
> > >
> > It depends on why you want it.
>
> Not wanting to close out her options? A general fear of missing out?
>
> I haven't heard a reason for keeping windows other than a general
> concern that she might need it at some point in the future.
>
> > I needed Windows on a laptop to run a
> > few proprietary applications relating to hardware, for programming
> > PIC microcontrollers and XBee radio boards, also to run my USB
> > oscilloscope. Both the scope driver and PIC IDE were available for
> > Linux but were very poor and buggy.
>
> Well.. most everything on windows is a proprietary application, but I
> don't know of any special hardware she has for the laptop.
> The printer & scanner are network attached, so they should work with
> Debian. Yes??
Generally yes, what I needed to use would be considered fairly exotic.
>
> > For direct hardware access, I wouldn't even try a VM, as proprietary
> > auxiliary software for hardware driving is often not that well
> > written and may do naughty things with the PC hardware, bypassing
> > the proper Windows API.
>
> I don't think direct hardware access is a concern.
>
> > For applications purely within Windows, perhaps a version which
> > can't be safely connected directly to the Net,
>
> Hah! Are you old enough to remember the 2002 "trustworthy computing"
> initiative .. that was more of a PR operation than actually making
> windows secure?
> As far as I'm concerned, "Microsoft" and "safely connected directly to
> the net" are like oil and water - they don't mix.
Yes, but many people do it anyway.
>
> > possibly a VM would be more useful.
>
> or safer? If a VM gets exploited one just deletes the VM and spins up
> a new one - yes?
>
Yes, there are several advantages e.g. VMs optimised for particular
jobs. There may also be snags. With virtualbox, for example, you really
need guest OS add-ons to get the best linking between host and guest,
and versions of virtualbox and the add-ons don't always go with the
particular kernels that Debian chooses to upgrade to. Maybe it's
different these days, but a few years ago I ran into that.
I did try virtualbox again a couple of months ago for a specific reason
which has now gone away, and a kernel upgrade (sid) a few days ago
killed it. I couldn't be bothered finding out what I needed to do to
revive it, so I purged it. OK, it should be much less trouble with
stable than with sid.
--
Joe
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