Perception is such a personal thing.

And unless it can be backed up with anything, is useless as a true measure of anything real. Unsure of how changing a case would turn it from 'unstable toy' into 'high end graphics workstation', or how the type of RAM would make it more secure. Good luck.

Yes, Windows-origin bootloader malware is real thing and the only way around that is to ensure that Windows never has direct access to the partition.

VirtualBox is good and you can get a lot of advice about advanced tips on using it from people here.

My own preference has been for Qemu and I would agree about the large number of options perhaps making it look harder to use than it really is. I have found that the way around that is to launch it using a short shell script and just keep adding and removing options in the script until I have everything needed for that project. You can do some really neat things with it that way. There is also a graphical front-end for Qemu which can help at the beginning but even after using the GUI for a while it turns out that a short shell script is the best for my activities.

VMware is basically proprietary and a chronic license violator to add non-technical reasons to the long list of technical reasons not to use it.

With the caveat that I don't use or condone the use of NTFS: Perhaps if you run Windows in a VM, and you have the data in the VM in a separate partition, then I would guess that you ought to be able to access the same files via the GNU/Linux host too when the VM is not in use.

Thank you for your further perspective.

I'm not an NTFS fan either (ext4 for me), but it's still better than that fragile, non-journal FAT32 file system chosen for the UEFI's, ESP boot partition forming the heart of a allegedly more 'secure' boot process rife with superfluous rituals which my suspicious nature regards as being but a Fabian means of instituting the eventual wide-spread adoption of cryptographically signed hardware components whose certificates could be revoked at will.

'Sounds far fetched? Well here at the hospital, the WiFi that patients and visitors have access to is provided by Aruba Networks under contract. Aside from offering a blistering 55Kb/s down & up and two-hour session limits, it also heavily censors numerous web sites like Google Cache and a number of small, on-line IT publications.

This censorship appears in Firefox as various network errors or out-of-date site signatures. Yet when the same URLs are run in Chromium, the truth is revealed in the form of censorship notices — complete with an appeal button that never works.

Now then, since 'Secure' Boot has gotten nearly everyone used to having cryptographically signed kernels and drivers etc, how much longer will it be until the same approach is applied to most PC hardware?

Whether or not, say, one's Internet-facing NIC will continue to pass an attestation test could be capriciously determined by some faceless ideologue or perhaps an AI after evaluating one's social media post history or any other range of factors.

11/03/2022
Trusted Hardware Identity Management | Microsoft Learn
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/az...ity-management

========

According to this, GPU pass-through is not supported in VirtualBox 7.0.4 (the current VB version):

17. Dec 2022
virtualbox.org • View topic - Graphics card passthrough
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=108091

Unfortunately, I don't have the hardware required to hands-on test this comprehensive step-by-step guide which covers AMD and nVidia GPUs:

25-12-2022
virtualization - Ubuntu 22.04 GPU passthrough (QEMU) - Ask Ubuntu
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1406...ssthrough-qemu

========

In the interest of optimizing everyone's time, it's likely best that I refrain from posting further in this thread until after my doctor acquaintance sends me his applications list and any other tangibles that I can think of asking him for.

Since you do not consider yourself as acting in the role of a consultant I would suggest that you be very clear in discussions with the MD that you are only acting in the role of a friend and experienced IT user but that you are not making suggestions but merely providing options that he can choose from.

Even then it is an extremely gray area to outsiders looking in whether your assistance is actually as an unpaid consultant or as a friend. Especially since you continue to ask for more and more info from him on the subject. Your active participation leans more and more toward the role of consultant. This does not seem a casual friendship depth of communication on the topic.

The system suggested above would be more than adequate for all but the most intensive of graphics artists and most gamers would swoon to have a machine of that quality. Suggesting a machine of that quality would be good. Suggesting individual build-it-yourself parts is only for the die-hard specialist with in depth knowledge of the hardware. Users vs power users vs experts. Each have their own level of knowledge and always base any discussion on the level of the audience.

TOTAL SPAM ARTICLE.

We all know in the USA that Microsoft paid lobby money illegally (largest sum in world history infact), after which "bribing congress became legal", which got them "LEAD OF THE COMMITTEE OF HEALTHCARE COMPUTING GOVERNMENT COUNCIL POWER" which MICROSOFT used to hack and jab standards to be microsoft-only standards.

Your post is political, debatable, and subject to lawsuits.

Really? What was the 'largest sum'??? Surprising no one else knows about this...even more surprising that no one from Microsoft is on the council:
https://www.gao.gov/press-release/ga...ry-committee-0
https://www.healthit.gov/hitac/commi...ommittee-hitac

Or that (if you read) they use healthcare standards, focused around digital imaging...and if you know anything about those systems, they run NOTHING from Microsoft. Try again, or feel free to bring whatever 'lawsuit' you'd like.

Saving this here for later,

That's a heads up for those still toying with the idea that new deployments of M$ Windows might somehow be acceptable in any way.

In spite of his thrice assertion to do so, my doctor acquaintance never did e-mail me any pertinent info re his intended PC build — which he seemed determined to DIY.

He also has a link to this thread, which I stressed as being worthy of his examination.

However, his actions thus far have adequately underscored the level of interest he has assigned to this subject. Thus, I see no reason to compete with a now-established standard.

I been watching this thread. Glad someone said this. I was going to. This is something you really don't want to get involved in. The legal side of this can come down on you in a worst case scenario. Let them get something from a proper vendor such as Dell, HP, Lenovo. They do stuff like this all the time. I see Lenovo stuff in particular all over the place at my ENT doctors office.

I know I'm late to the party but this can't be overstated enough.

1 members found this post helpful.

You find out what programs he wants to run and you build a platform to run them. It's one thing if he wants to access a web-based portal. It's another if he wants to run a serial port device that only has drivers for Windows 3.1.

Control of the file formats is everything.