Trying to DUMP Windows.... But

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

Chris Jones wrote:
> This is true. But there are many things (IMO) which do not work as well 
> in a VM as a native install, such as access to USB drives (I find the 
> free VM solutions tend to do worse here than paid for ones). Also, you 
> won't get good graphics performance in a VM ubuntu install, as you would 
> in a native install. This is all obvious to those of us familiar with 
> such things, but for someone considering switching to ubuntu it is just 
> another set of complications that might get in the way and spoil the 
> trial experience with linux..

Points well taken but, my understanding is that virtualizing via kvm
(Kernel Virtual Mode), particularly if you have the virtualization
extensions implemented in your CPU and your motherboard supports it, and
many do these days, has a negligible and imperceptible hit on
performance. I have run Windows in such an environment but I had no
motivation to run benchmarks because the performance was so good that I
didn't care if I might "only" have 95% of the performance of running on
bare metal.

Generally speaking, those who virtualize aren't gamers and graphics
performance, especially on modern hardware, is perfectly acceptable in
virtual machines. When I run Windows virtualized, it's only because I
want to treat it like a brain in a jar like in one of those shlocky
sci-fi flicks. I don't care about connecting peripherals via USB or
squeezing the last few frames per second of graphics performance. In
fact, if I cared about the latter, I wouldn't run the pedestrian video
cards I run.

The original question could be summarized as, "Will Linux work as well
for me as Windows Vista does for handling multimedia?" It depends on how
willing you are to learn something new. Any change, even from one
Windows application to another, requires you to learn new things but
that you've asked the question implies you're receptive to the idea.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the elephant in the room. The gold
standard for multimedia seems to be OS X. Based on my limited experience
with editing video on Windows and Linux, and playing around with it on
OS X, if I had to do it on a regular basis, I'd be tempted to buy a Mac.
Of the three, Windows was the worst experience but all I had to work
with was Windows Movie Maker.

> So, I would actually go with the Wubi install. Its 'native' but doesn't 
> require repartitioning etc., plus can be uninstalled easily by anyone 
> familiar with windows. I take you point about users being able to fall 
> back to a more familiar windows browser, whilst the VM is still running. 
> But, in my view as long as the ubuntu install gets the desktop running, 
> and networking working, which it really should out the box, the user 
> should always be able to fire up firefox and debug any problems there.

Anyone who clings to Windows because of the "more familiar Windows
browser" really needs to install Firefox, Opera, or Google Chrome to see
that they're not so unfamiliar after all. The differences between
different generations of IE and these browsers are just as great, or
just as small, depending on your perspective. The only good reason to
use IE is if your employer's IT department mandates IE (in a shocking
number of cases, IE 6) as "the standard", or you have to use web
applications written by clueless web developers (like the MLS systems
used by some real estate boards), or you're a web developer who has to
test against IE.

Anyway, to the original poster, the least intrusive way of fairly
evaluating Linux is to install and run Linux on your second disk drive
and dual boot. In the amount of time it has taken you to read the
responses to this thread, you could have already done this. It's really
not that hard. If you're happy with Linux, then you can examine options
for virtualizing Windows to run within Linux. There are ways you can run
a physical installation of Windows virtualized so you may not even have
to reinstall Windows to do it.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326
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