Virtual machine

ABenz99

Member
So, I am planning on building a computer soon. I plan on putting a lot of money into it, so it should have premium hardware (I am making a thread about hardware advice), but I have a question about the software and OS. I am using my computer for gaming, music production, video editing, programming, and general software/web browsing. I like using Linux, but a lot of the programs I need only work on windows. I have three options: Virtual machines, dual boot, or Wine. I've heard Wine doesn't work well with most programs, and I tried and failed to install some games using it. Dual boot would work fine, but it would get annoying having to constantly restart the computer when I wanted to switch, I would have to split the hard drive, not being able to save my files in one single location, and I wouldn't be able to use a windows/linux software at the same time. Virtualbox seems like my best option, but I know most software (especially games) are slow in a virtual machine. Any recommendations for what I should do? Or what hardware I should look for (remember, money isn't an issue) to run a virtualbox as fast as possible.
 
Make Windows your primary OS and then just make a virtual machine for the Linux OS you want.
 
Or, without monetary restrictions, get a gaming rig, then a casual rig, set them up side by side with a dual monitor setup, then use synergy to control both rigs with one mouse and keyboard. Then you have a dedicated linux machine, and windows machine, but, it'll work the same as having one rig with a VM capable of doing whatever you want.
 
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I'll recommend you setting as primary OS the one which primary apps requires more CPU/GPU Power otherwise if you wan't to run Pro Tools for Windows on Virtual Machine rest assured you'll get a lot of trouble.

I love Linux too but unfortunately my main apps require Windows so I stick to it.
 
...I would have to split the hard drive, not being able to save my files in one single location...

Just a note, this isn't true at all. You can quite easily configure linux to access your NTFS/FAT32 formatted windows partition.

As has been mentioned here already, for graphic related programs (or really anything that will rely a lot on hardware acceleration) then dual booting is the best option. But for everything else then virtual box will work nicely. Especially on a newly built computer with lots of RAM.

Wine would be the worst option on its own, but you can use it either in your VM or in a dual boot scenario to add any Windows programs in that would play nicely. Check out WineHQ to see which apps work well.
 
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