5 ms·

I'm one of those guys that develop for a living (mainly from home) and play a lot. I love developping with linux, but need windows to play, so here's my story.

I'm one of those guys that develop for a living (mainly from home) and play a lot. I love developping with linux, but need windows to play, so here's my story. I tried a lot of things, linux with Wine, linux with a virtualbox windows guest, windows with a linux virtualbox guest, same with vmware, same with hyperv, but all were suboptimal to me, and I didnt really like having two separate environments for work and hobbies (although I understand some people may be more comfortable that way) Finally, I settled on a windows 10, a linux guest under vmware with no desktop environnement (an ubuntu server + the Xorg libraries I need), and I just use an X server running under windows (the one from MobaXTerm, but cygwin should be fine too) to display the linux windows apps in my normal MS-Windows environment. I feel like I have the best of both world, I can use visual studio, unity3d, under windows, and play with my steam library, and for work that needs linux (mostly my server-side developments, but also a non-trivial QT application that I sell for windows and mac, but actually like developping under linux). Thanks to the X Server, the apps running in the linux vm are displayed in Windows as if they were standard windows app.

ranza 10y ago
That sounds pretty cool! Im in the same boat but with mac instead of windows. Wonder if i could do the same thing. I mean, Xorg is available on mac too.
tejinderss 10y ago
Very interesting I will give it a go, all I need is sublime text as a graphical editor and I am good to go
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
blauditore 10y ago
Have you ever tried a dualboot system (separate partitions for Linux and Windows, choose OS on startup)? I do this on all my machines and it works quite well. There's no VM overhead and if you manage to bork one OS, you still have the other one for online research, creating recovery drives etc.
- hellofunk 10y ago
  The problem can be driver support. And you have to become a sys admin for your machine.
- neves 10y ago
  I leave my machine always on. Zero boot time.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Not OP, but: I would do a dual boot if I could, but corporate IT will cut me off from the internet if they detect a non-compliant system (unsupported OS, no antivirus bullshit, etc). so I'm stuck in a Linux VM.
a3n 10y ago
Agreed. I've used the cygwin X server, it works fine. I've used a virtualbox linux guest from Windows host (with the GUI running on the guest), and vice versa, it works fine. Similar, I've used an X server on my linux laptop to display apps from my raspberrypi. Enough memory and cores on your host is necessary, otherwise it's frustrating. You don't need a beast, but a kitten with absolute minimal specs won't do. Edit: be sure to set up shared folders between the guest and host, it makes things easier. scp isn't bad either, but it can be a little easier to just plop/copy files in a directory.
akulbe 10y ago
How do you have any graphical apps installed at all, without it grabbing any/all of the entire "*-desktop" group of packages as dependencies? What GUI apps do you use? I'm very interested in replicating your setup here, so if you have this documented, do you care to share?
nerdponx 10y ago
Consider this another "+1 in the hopes that you document this setup"

ranza 10y ago

That sounds pretty cool! Im in the same boat but with mac instead of windows. Wonder if i could do the same thing. I mean, Xorg is available on mac too.

tejinderss 10y ago

Very interesting I will give it a go, all I need is sublime text as a graphical editor and I am good to go

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

blauditore 10y ago

Have you ever tried a dualboot system (separate partitions for Linux and Windows, choose OS on startup)? I do this on all my machines and it works quite well. There's no VM overhead and if you manage to bork one OS, you still have the other one for online research, creating recovery drives etc.

hellofunk 10y ago
The problem can be driver support. And you have to become a sys admin for your machine.
neves 10y ago
I leave my machine always on. Zero boot time.
majewsky 10y ago
Not OP, but: I would do a dual boot if I could, but corporate IT will cut me off from the internet if they detect a non-compliant system (unsupported OS, no antivirus bullshit, etc). so I'm stuck in a Linux VM.

a3n 10y ago

Agreed. I've used the cygwin X server, it works fine. I've used a virtualbox linux guest from Windows host (with the GUI running on the guest), and vice versa, it works fine. Similar, I've used an X server on my linux laptop to display apps from my raspberrypi. Enough memory and cores on your host is necessary, otherwise it's frustrating. You don't need a beast, but a kitten with absolute minimal specs won't do. Edit: be sure to set up shared folders between the guest and host, it makes things easier. scp isn't bad either, but it can be a little easier to just plop/copy files in a directory.

akulbe 10y ago

How do you have any graphical apps installed at all, without it grabbing any/all of the entire "*-desktop" group of packages as dependencies? What GUI apps do you use? I'm very interested in replicating your setup here, so if you have this documented, do you care to share?

nerdponx 10y ago

Consider this another "+1 in the hopes that you document this setup"