Virtualization vs Dual Boot

[stpvoice]

Virtualization is good for testing, and an easy way to find your way around an operating system with the ability just to delete the virtual drive if anything goes wrong. The problem is, if you don't have much RAM (like me) it's very jumpy and kills the rest of the computer.

Dual boot is good if you know what you're doing, and are experienced in troubleshooting boot problems.

My vote goes to dual boot.

 

[callumacrae]

I have buggered up my computer more than once. It never actually occurred to me to do the experimenting in a virtual machine

~Callum

 

[stpvoice]

I tried to install a not completely legal copy of Mac OS X under the dual boot, but it ended up badly with me corrupting the MBR that my windows operating system used to boot, and it couldn't be repaired, so I had to recover my data with a Linux live CD then reinstall windows. I'll never make that mistake again.

 

[callumacrae]

Hackintosh?

They've improved quite a lot recently, some of the old copies of Leopard even support automatic upgrades.

~Callum

 

[stpvoice]

Yeah, thats the badger.

 

[ah-blabla]

On my old "dual boot" system I somewhow broke Window$ (i.e. I hadn't booted it in about a year, and was doing some backups and testing, decided to see whether it still worked -- it just gave an error on bootup -- that gave me the motivation to completely wipe that partition...). But the number of times I have used a liveCD to recover my boot loader is quite large -- in my early days I would break Grub weekly, but now I'm working quite well. My current multiboot system has survived without external booting (it isn't actually possible to boot from anything than hd due to lack of cd-drive, usb booting and broken NIC), but I haven't really experimented much apart from adding a dsl partition, and I only really boot one system at all, so I am really still a single boot, vitualisationless person. (Once in a blue moon I boot DSL to get a static snapshot of my root partition, but that's it.)

 

[arunproff]

It might be duel boot, I can never remember which, sorry.

Anyway, do you prefer Virtualization or Dual boot?
...

~Callum

Duel boot - haha I like that. A duel between the OSes which in kind of what it is.

Personally I use virtualization, I have WinXP on my laptop with 2GB of RAM. I use CoLinux to run Ubuntu. CoLinux is great, it gives me all the tools I need for development work, and hardly takes up any RAM. The colinux processes take up a total of under 10MB of RAM on my system. (Of course this is not including whatever RAM you set aside for the linux image)

I used to use dual boot before, with Fedora and Windows, but rapidly found that annoying especially when I had to work with both OSes concurrently.

I am also keeping a close eye on ReactOS an open source OS based on Windows. Once that reaches some maturity I will probably run just Ubuntu on my system (single boot), and use VirtualBox to run ReactOS and whatever other OSes I need.

 

[Gouri]

A Bit of both.

I prefer two OS dual boot (Obviously Linux and Windows). Then virtualization for running or testing programs different environments.

 

[kallankurup]

:lockd::lockd::lockd::lockd:

 

[callumacrae]

...spam?

Anyway...

I've decided that I just prefer two networked computers. With Samba I can share files easily anyway

~Callum

 

[dharshan]

if it's for the sake of tesing, that ur gonna install an OS, then Virtual pc is best, but if u want to use 2 OS s at the same time, then a dual boot will come in handy.

but they both have there advantages and drawbacks..

dual boot...
can make u sick when u wanna get rid of one OS

Virtual testing..is good if you have a good CPU and a lot of RAM

 

[alexandgruntz]

dual boot...
can make u sick when u wanna get rid of one OS

Not really. All you have to do is format the drive/partition its on, then remove it from the bootloader. Maybe its different for Linux though. :biggrin:

 

[ah-blabla]

Not really. All you have to do is format the drive/partition its on, then remove it from the bootloader. Maybe its different for Linux though. :biggrin:

Yes, on GNU/Linux you remove it from the bootloader, then you format the partition... :biggrinOr you never add the other system into the bootloader in the first place.) The only problem is if the bootloader happens to be on the same partition as the OS. With the Windows "bootloader" I don't think it's possible to store the bootloader + config on a different partition from the OS (correct me if I'm wrong), if your using Grub though, you can store the Grub config + files separately from your OS partition.

 

[alexandgruntz]

With the Windows "bootloader" I don't think it's possible to store the bootloader + config on a different partition from the OS (correct me if I'm wrong), if your using Grub though, you can store the Grub config + files separately from your OS partition.

With Windows XP you can. It always puts its bootloader and config data on C:, so if you install it to D:, they're separate. With Vista, it sees the drive its on as C: always, so it's not quite the same, but it's not hard to remove secondary OSs.

 

[lithaerien]

Just like someone else in this thread said, it depends on what you want to do. I have too much OCD and I know that virtual won't come to its full potential such as propper hardware. Yes, VMware and Parallels desktop (if you're a mac) allows you to play SOME games, but at a major setback... performance. And yes, Windows will nuke GRUB which is why many prefer to install that first then linux, but it used to do the same both ways.

In short: I like dual boot cause I dislike virtual hardware drawbacks.. it works.. but knowing that it could be faster irks me.. OCD

I'm also not entirely Linux cause it seems to hate my wireless USB stick with a passion.

 

[Derek]

I currently dual boot windows xp and windows 7, I found that it lagged while in a virtual machine and I would rather dual. But, I used to also triple boot with ubuntu and windows. I might make a hackintosh. I hate partitioning the haddrive tho.

 

[rspk13]

I utilize both dual boot and virtualization for different purposes. I use dual boot to be able to play Windows-only games. Virtual machines I use for work-related things like to use remote IIS manager, testing how my websites look on different browsers, etc.

If virtual machines had proper 3D graphics support, I'd only use virtual machines, but currently that's not possible.

 

[lithaerien]

I currently dual boot windows xp and windows 7, I found that it lagged while in a virtual machine and I would rather dual. But, I used to also triple boot with ubuntu and windows. I might make a hackintosh. I hate partitioning the haddrive tho.

Yeah, when I try to install linux on the same HDD as my Windows I get only problems, or at least used to. GRUB seems to have gotten better, but nonetheless I prefer to keep my MBR untouched. A nice fix I used required two HDD's.. I'd just install linux on the second drive and have bios select which drive I want to load, that way no harm was done to the Windows drive, and vice versa.

 

[CWeb Creative]

Virtualazation. Maninly because of the isolation factor. You can try something out without risking your computer. Currently i have Ubuntu Server, Centos, Fedora 12 and Kubuntu running on sun virtualbox. Amazingly i have gotten them to all run full speed at onece. Another great thing about virtualazation is that it is quicker to install. Where it might take 2 hours to set up a full regular os in 20 min i can have one running in virtualbox

 

[legendkiller4all]

I prefer Virtualization,,, it makes me work simultaneouslly on diff platform