Hi,

As my subject already states, I'm done with windows..So many years of torture, failure, and utter disappointment..I'm done with as my primary operating system.

I've been working with Linux for years for my research. So I have some experience but am by no means an expert. I've never tried using any kinds of virtualizations.

That said, I have two laptops which I've decided I'm going to move over to Linux. One is a high-end D900F with 3.3 GHz quad-core CPU, 12GB RAM with a Nvidia Geforce 280M..The other is an old Sony with a P200 processor, and only 500MB of ram.

I've got copies of WinXP I can install on the virtualizations for both.

Here's my questions.

a) On the high end machine, the only reason why I'd still need windows really is because I do occasionally like to play the games. Can I actually use VirtualBox or something else to actually play those games, I mean the latest, more GPU intensive games that don't work with WINE. Under the assumption I can get the NVIDIA drivers to work in linux, can these virtual machines actually utilize the 3D acceleration? Is that something simple?

b) The old laptop is used to run some windows software which I haven't been able to get to run under wine. I'm pretty sure I can get it to run some lightweight Linux distro, but I have no idea of the kinds of resources would be required if I also put winxp on it to run through a virtual machine. Which of these virtualizations is the lightest (uses the least resources)?? Can they still run on such an old machine?

thank you very much, any advice would be appreciated.
Marko

I'm not sure why you'd want to go monkeying with virtualization. It looks like dual boot has what you're looking for... especially for the older laptop, since it saves all the resources required for the virtual machine, which will help the performance of both environments, Linux and XP.

Hi Sloob,

I guess I should've explained my reasoning better. The windows is only something I'll have to use like once a month. And I'm sick and tired of it having direct access to the internet, and my BIOS. I have dual boot right now on the high-end machine. Last night I mistakenly left the Vista on and it did an update and reboot without ever asking for permission (as it frequently does). I don't know how or why, but it messed up my BIOS in the process. In order to get the machine running again I had to flash the BIOS and reinstall windows..However when I did that the windows recovery CD wiped my GRUB. So now I'm having to work off a Linux cd to get my Ubuntu to show up in GRUB again.

I've just had it with Windows, I don't want to allow it to have control over my machine anymore..This way, if it decides to do some funky updates or whatever in the future, I figure the worst it can do is mess up the virtual machine.

This is my logic at the moment. Though, to be honest my thinking may not be entirely objective at the moment since I'm fuming with rage at Microsoft.

Also, there a couple of programs which I need in Windows for work, but whose results I like to view in Linux programs (Mathcad and FITS files if anyone cares)...I'd like to be able to do it simultaneously without having to reboot each time.

I don't see how virtualization solves this problem. The safest condition for the Windows machine is "off," and that's solved by dual-booting... though you still have to remember to shut it down when you're done. That would still be the case in a VM environment, too. Also, I don't think there's anything a VM can do to prevent a BIOS update utility from working.

The only thing I can see where it helps you is that in a VM environment, you can decide not to allocate the network card, so it can't be auto-installed by the OS, and is not available to the internet. There are other, much less complicated methods to accomplishing this. You could edit the TCP/IP settings to something that's unusuable... disable DHCP, set the default route to somewhere outside your LAN, etc.

To prevent yourself from accidentally leaving the Windows machine on when you're done with it, you could write a Windows script that prompts the user for a response within a specified amount of time, then shuts down the system if no response is given. Put that in the task scheduler for a time when you should not normally be using it. You'd have to disable suspend/sleep mode in the OS order to execute it, though, so that's a trade-off.

You should be able to change the update settings so you'll be prompted when updates are available... this is how I've got mine set up on XP. It neither installs patches nor does the post-install reboot until I give my assent.

Vista is just plain awful, though, so in your place I'd focus on either upgrading to Win7 or downgrading to XP. Bottom line, though, is that it looks to me like there are better ways to solve these problems within the Windows environments, rather than looking to virtualization.

How will modifying the VM's BIOS harm anything?

And... my previous post window was left open for a while, so I didn't see the Mathcad/FITS post until after I hit submit, so feel free to disregard whichever parts no longer apply.

You could still avoid virtualization if using the two computers side-by-side and having a file share between them is an option. Because while this does sound like a valid use case for virtualization, and the following qualification does depend on how much/often you do this, it does sound a little bit like a limited use for all the extra complexity and resource utilization you'll be paying for the convenience.

Keep Windows. I understand you are frustrated now, but you will probably regret the decision later.

If you want to experiment with virtualization on the faster machine, then go for it! But you don't need to erase your current Windows install to do so.

Ah, sorry, I didn't realize VMs emulate BIOS.

@Snowpine, yeah you're probably right..I'll keep the windows on for now while I experiment..But my original question stands..I see about half a dozen different virtual machines out there.. I was hoping to get some advice on which would be most likely to be able to utilize my graphics card, and for the low-end machine which might be least resource-intensive. I just don't want to spend the next 2-3 days trying out different VMs.

@Sloop, I'm going to keep the windows up for now..But as soon as I'm confident that I can run my work programs in Linux I'm going to get rid of the windows, don't really care about games enough to keep it on. I've just had too many instances of windows messing up my machine over the years, this way if it messes something up it'll just be the virtual box I assume. With regards to what you said about writing a script and adjusting the settings to prevent reboots..I did that with my XP years ago.Worked great.But the problem with Vista is that, believe it or not, even if you do turn off automatic updates..And setup the options so that supposedly won't reboot without your consent, that only stops about 90% of the reboots.. It still keeps rebooting every couple of weeks whether you like it or not. There's numerous threads about it online and I never found a proper solution..But for an operating system that doesn't even allow you to look at a good chunk of your own directories (even with all the security disabled), it's not really surprising...

On a side note, I'm now reinstalling drivers and whatnot on the windows, and I need a Vista update which is required to prevent Vista from crashing every time I try to get my webcam to work..Except that now, for some reason, Microsoft claims my copy of Vista is illegal and thus won't allow me to download any updates. Even though my copy is totally legal and I was allowed to download the update a year ago when I first had the problem. I'm reaching new levels of exasperation with this operating system.

Virtualizing Windows works great for pretty much everything, however it is not really suited for games. Unless you use paravirtualization with specs for the host machine and you can connect e.g. iSCSI disks to your VM. Presumably you don't have an iSCSI target. Besides that paravirtualization can't be done with Windows or with a type 2 hypervisor.

Nevertheless you can give it a try to see if it works for you.

I agree with Blue_Ice... if you only need Windows for a few simple tasks that work poorly or not-at-all in Linux (Outlook, Visio, e.g.), then spinning up a small VirtualBox Windows guest is the way to go.

But games are resource intensive and often require direct access to advanced hardware resources.

My advice would be to eschew this forum and see how people using VirtualBox have fared playing resource-intensive games on a Windows virt:

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=7

--Greg

I have ran into the exact same problem you have. . .
I have solved it. . .I use Vmware.
I have a single boot into ibuntu, run VMware, and presto, I have windows XP, 7, or whatever I want.

Not only that, I make a backup copy just in case something happens with my emulator. I run my Borland builder compilers, Rad Studio compilers, and Embarcago compilers out of the emulator. These are heavy programs too.

I will never go back. . .

Right now, I am on a Dell Mini 1018. 1 gig of ram, Ibuntu for the boot, and VMware runs both Windows 7 and Windows XP. . .without any problems at all.

The duel boot is not worth it. . .I used to have dual boot a long time ago.

Dwayne