Anyone out there know about virtualisation?

[andrewducker]

I have two general cases of use for my desktop:
1) Surf the web and check email. For which a Linux desktop would work perfectly well.
2) Play games. For which I need Windows. And no, I will not spend weeks of my life faffing with WINE or somesuch. Just no.

What would be awesome would be to use some kind of virtualisation to have both operating systems loaded at the same time, and only switch into the one which has antivirus software and all sorts of additional crud installed when I needed to. Not rebooting between them, as this would be clunky and take significant chunks of time, but something more instant.

However, so far as I understand, doing so would be tricky, as things like 3D graphics don't run well from inside a virtualised OS. And so if I was doing that I'd lose the ability to do the thing I find Windows useful for.

Is this actually the case, oh well-educated friends list and passing people? Or is it something I could set up fairly easily?

Comments

[pseudomonas]

Something else to bear in mind, is that (AIUI) if you have Windows in a virtual environment, it doesn't think it's running on the machine it was sold for and stops working, or at least stops security-updating, for your comfort and convenience. This (again, AIUI) applies if you use Windows that's sold with a machine, rather than paying a couple of hundred pounds for a separate copy — if you do the latter then you can use it in a virtual machine, but only (thricely, AIUI) the one virtual machine.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

MS Hyper-V virtual machines use the system hardware (Steven has some set up and they use the sound/graphics card just fine)... but I can't see how that'd actually help you, cos if running Linux from within Windows would do the job, you'd be doing it....

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"A linux desktop would work perfectly well" is not the same as "I have to use Linux for this" - why does Windows for surfing and email not work? And is there a reason Linux In A VM On A Windows Host doesn't work for you?

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Xen has a new VGA passthrough which, if you've got VT-X (which I assume you do), basically presents the real graphics hardware to the guest OS. So I gather that lets you play 3D games, but I don't know what the performance overhead is.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Serious question - don't you have a tablet?

Virtualisation

[ajax-nz.livejournal.com]

Righty...

Sounds like you don't want either os to be primary, but you need hardware acceleration for games.

Hardware gaming means windows (pretty much) has to be a real OS, but then the other one is a 2nd class citizen. Hyper visor with vt-x might be possible but the free versions of both VMware and xen don't do that any more, so you are into server costs there.

The best solution I've found is the one that macs+VMware fusion does (and can be done with virtualbox etc too) which is to have both os's installed as real hardware systems, but also set up to run as VMs within the other.

That way, most of the time you run Linux with windows in a VM (fine for office, utilities etc, but can't run games). But you can reboot into windows for serious gaming. From windows you can run the Linux in a vm too.

I find it gives the best of both worlds.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I'd repartition and multi-boot. That's the only way you'll get the performance and isolation you want.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Aren't you always going to take a performance hit with virtualisation, so just setting up a dual boot system (with drives/partitions set up for access from both OS's) might be preferable? Especially if the boot times aren't an issue.

[fub.livejournal.com]

Low-tech solution: get a really cheap Atom-based nettop, and use that to surf and do e-mail. KVM-switch to hook it up to your existing desktop infrastructure is a nice (but optional) extra.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend two computers, a corner desk and a chair that swivels.

I think any virtualised solution is going to kill your performance even if you get the 3D drivers running.

There's always Cedega and Crossover. I've used both (not with a huge amount of success) but it depends what you're playing.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

(just for completeness, you could have mentioned why dual-boot wasn't your first choice, and why, say, Firefox on Windows isn't a solution.)