8 ms·
Perhaps I'm missing the point. If one is going to boot up between OS's that often wouldn't virtualization work best? Other than that it is a neat hack.
by larrydag 11y ago
Perhaps I'm missing the point. If one is going to boot up between OS's that often wouldn't virtualization work best? Other than that it is a neat hack.
- KC8ZKF 11y agoThe points you are missing are 2003 and Celeron. Efficient and easy virtualization is relatively recent.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoVMWare Workstation was already on its 4th major release by 2003.
- mattdotc 11y agoWhich wasn't really free if I remember correctly. You had to buy or crack it. Also, I don't think the performance really compared on consumer desktop hardware. As annoying as dual-booting was, it was the way all of my hobbyist friends and I preferred back then. edit: grammar
- dsp1234 11y agoHardware virtualization for intel/amd processors did not come until 2006. So you could run VMWare and get decent performance with paravirtualized drivers, but running a completely different OS would have required software virtualization, and it was not fast by any means. Booting to the other operating system was a much better experience since the OS would then have full use of the resources without software virtualization being in the way.
- wang_li 11y agoSoftware only virtualization was faster than the first generation of hardware supported virtualization. See page 7. of this document: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/asplos235_adams.pdf http://www.vmware.com/pdf/asplos235_adams.pdf
- thrownaway2424 11y agoIndeed. It is quite amazing how history is being revised here. Software virtualization was extremely useful from day 1.
- pjc50 11y agoDual-boot was entirely routine in the Linux world at this time. Especially as you could install it without disrupting your existing Windows installation.
- nitrogen 11y agoVirtualization is still quite slow compared to running natively, especially for things like games.
- jimlei 11y agoWell, "quite slow" is of course subjective. But compared to 10+ years ago standards it's barely noticeable today. It seems to be mostly an issue with GPU virtualization. So if you plan your hardware and set it up right (pci passthrough) you can get very good performance, even in a VM. To see it (over)done, check out Linus Tech Tips 2 Gaming Rigs, 1 Tower - Virtualized Gaming Build Log https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJYMCbIbPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJYMCbIbPk 7 Gamers 1 CPU is back! But does it ACTUALLY work!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opX-AsJ5Uy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opX-AsJ5Uy8
- nitrogen 11y agoIf I understood the video correctly that was a dual-socket Xeon system, though, and there was considerable stuttering visible from time to time even if average framerates were decent.
- jimlei 11y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37D2bRsthfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37D2bRsthfI Read more https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2z0evz/gpu_passthrough_or_how_to_play_any_game_at_near/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2z0evz/gpu_pa...
- nitrogen 11y agoI read the Reddit post; that looks easier to set up than I thought. I might give it a try some day. But I don't mind rebooting to switch OS anyway (10s boot times plus fast legacy BIOS).