Miles, I completely agree with you. My doubts regarding a multi-boot Windows/Linux are related to beginners who used Windows only for years.
When I switched from other computers to a PC I installed both, Windows and Linux. I was a very experienced coder on other computers, so the situation is different to a user who only used Windows before. I've got FreeBSD and XP on my Linux machine installed, because I bought a very expensive sound card that is recommended for Linux, but doesn't work very good, so I needed to test the card with drivers for other OS, to ensure that the card isn't broken. First I installed FreeBSD. Using the sound card with FreeBSD already showed that it's not broken, but the FreeBSD driver doesn't support the sound card's hardware mixer, so I installed XP too, to be able to test the complete sound card. Since I won an iPad I need iTunes. Because wifi between Linux and the iPad doesn't work, I really need iTunes, even if I would be willing to use the Apple Cloud (but I'm not willing to use it). The needed iTunes versions don't run on wine, so what I'm really using is XP as guest in Virtual Box running on Linux. For FreeBSD (not the Debian port, the real thing) it's the same, I don't boot it anymore, but I'm willing to use Debian's FreeBSD as guest too, assumed I should have the time to figure out how to install it, it didn't work until now. $ ls -l VirtualBox\ VMs/ total 8 drwxr-xr-x 3 rocketmouse rocketmouse 4096 Oct 16 15:18 debBSD drwxr-xr-x 4 rocketmouse users 4096 Nov 12 11:34 winOS During iOS updates VBox is a PITA, because I need to reconnect VBox's virtual USB connection several times, I anyway never installed it to the real XP install on my machine. I'm a Linux user and I e.g. write shell scripts on the iPad, so it would be idiotic to reboot to Windows to copy the scripts to a Linux install. Booting different Linux on my machine, s something I do, while one of those Linux is my "main" Linux. Those different Linux share Evolution's email folder and VirtualBox's settings and .vdis. For Evolution I don't have to take care about the version and the VirtualBox versions on different Linux installs are synced to the same version. I can't use Linux as guest, because I need those Linux installs for real-time audio production. From time to time I test a distro in a virtual machine, but while Vbox does a good job running a XP guest, it's not always fun for Linux guests. Resume: To install other OSs IMO only is useful for software/hardware development and to test bought hardware that does misbehave with Linux, while it shouldn't. To install several Linux is useful for special tuned, customized Linux, that e.g. need real-time access to the real hardware and to test what Linux does fit to one's needs on some hardware, but I experienced that maintaining more than two Linux installs (real installs, not as guest) is nearly impossible for me. For any other reasons I always would use a virtual machine and run another OS as guest. Regards, Ralf PS: "Linux" in this context is for the kernel and user space, the complete bundle. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1384265761.1111.233.camel@archlinux
