At 09:56 AM 12/14/2012, Rick Moen wrote: >Anyway, I _still_ continue to think that dual-booting is generally a >solution to the wrong problem, and that running alternative OSes (such >as MS-Windows ;-> ) in a virtual machine session gives vastly superior >operational results. That is, in my experience, users who think they >will get good usage out of a dual-boot setup are overly optimistic, and >have not stopped to consider how disruptive of one's computing it is to >shut everything down and reboot. In the long term, I've noticed, they >stay 99.9% of the time in one OS and ignore the other. Which means >they've wasted their time and effort. By contrast, a VM approach (given >adequate RAM and CPU to make both OSes comfortable) allows and >encourages concurrent use of both operating systems.
I agree totally. The last time I dual booted for any reason other than temporarily loading Windows when getting an Optus cable moved or contacting their tech support (an operation done only 2-3 times!) would be in the order of 10 years ago, and even the last aforementioned "Optus test" would have been 8-9 years ago. And it is precisely for the reason you stated above. I found the hassle of rebooting to switch OSs, even while sharing diskspace between them and having a number of applications configured so they could run under different OSs (where possible) on the same data, was simply too time consuming. In 2003 or 2004 I purchased a copy of VMware Workstation (the only viable option at the time), and I never looked back. I still have a VM (running Windows 2000) from that era, though now it runs under VMware Fusion on a Mac. It's done the rounds of host OSs, Linux, Windows and OS X. :) For me, virtualisation has proven to be a vastly superior solution to dual/triple booting, except in rare circumstances, such as one soundcard based data comms application, which doesn't run well under VMware (a problem which will be solved by using a hardware TNC, rather than the software one, when funds permit). Interestingly, another soundcard based data comms application which uses a much more sophisticated software modem runs flawlessly in a VMware VM. Go figure... 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list [email protected] http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
