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Why not dual boot linux and windows 10 or use a Linux VM? It takes like 10-15 seconds to reboot a machine these days. I am about to take the plunge toward a Thi

Why not dual boot linux and windows 10 or use a Linux VM? It takes like 10-15 seconds to reboot a machine these days. I am about to take the plunge toward a ThinkPad after many years with OSX (I haven't upgraded my 2011 17" to macOS). My plan is to try dual booting linux and/or using a Linux VM. I think the biggest hurdle will be changing my mindset. That is, looking for the OSX version of whatever it is I am looking for. Wrapping my mind around Linux... just Linux for as much as possible. I am looking forward to using just Linux as time goes on. I need to ween myself off of a few things before I can make the switch completely... I did it when I went from win to mac.

tagurit 9y ago
As OP mentioned, he probably doesn't want to turn off his system. This is problem I have with a dual boot system, even with the ability to save state. Unless I absolutely have to, I'd rather keep running macOS's
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  With the problems I see on the mac forums regarding the new MBP's, I don't think turning off the system is going to be much of an issue. That said, I understand not wanting to restart in order to get work done. However, I am looking at it with the perspective that I will be able to fully focus on the tasks at hand (ala Deep Work by Cal Newport), in a distraction free environment.
  - isolli 9y ago
    What problems specifically? I'm not following closely, so a summary would be nice :)
latencyloser 9y ago
I'm in a similar predicament to OP. I prefer Linux in most cases, it's what I'm used to. But I need or would vastly prefer one or the other depending on what I'm doing. A VM is fine for just checking outlook..or using Skype for chat and things like that. But the second I need to use an IDE for Windows development, it's too slow to bear. Having better interchangeability between these two would make my life significantly better. Whether that be a stronger Linux subsystem for Windows, or a Windows subsystem for Linux. Of course, I work at Microsoft. That being said, many devs I see are open to or enjoy using Linux--myself included. I think, and hope, we'll see continued growth in support for it. Though, I have little to no influence over such things.
- discordance 9y ago
  How is the attitude/atmosphere internally at Microsoft towards people using a competing OS (Mac or Linux). Does the group working on Windows OS feel alienated at all?
  - latencyloser 9y ago
    In my experience, pretty positive. I see Macs around campus frequently. In my team, people mostly use Windows, so there's definitely no alienation there. However, when people notice I mostly use Linux, I usually receive a chuckle for not using Windows--either out of irony or since we are highly encouraged to dogfood everything here. But that's usually the last I hear of it, so I don't think anyone sees anything wrong with it.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  There are some ways to improve VM performance. You could try to pre-create the disk volume instead of leaving it dynamic as it usually is, attach a partition directly, or move it to a different disk that'll not interfere with your other apps (my bigger home box has system and apps on one disk, VM volumes and network shares on another). If you do that, your performance hit for disk IO will be very close to zero. A modern CPU will usually not eat up more than 3% per virtualisation layer (at least under KVM). Beyond that, you can assign more cores to the virtual machine and see how it goes. Even a relatively humble i7 laptop has enough power to run Visual Studio with dignity for all but the craziest projects. If we are talking about a beefy Xeon E5 workstation with 64 gigs of memory, you'll probably be able to assign more resources to the Windows VM than Visual Studio knows how to deal with.
- mysterydip 9y ago
  Not all VM host softwares are created equal. One of the other solutions out there may have higher performance for your needs. As a sibling comment said, there's ways to troubleshoot performance as well. With a modern system and the virtualization instructions baked into CPUs, most VMs should approach "near native" speeds.
  - 9y ago
freedomben 9y ago
I did almost this exact thing a few years ago and I've been super happy. Two points of advice: 1. Check hardware compatibility _before_ you order your laptop. Intel video drivers and wifi drivers are open source and reliable. Stay away from Broadcom, and unless you plan to do gaming, stay away from Nvidia (tho modern Ubuntu makes nvidia pretty darn easy). 2. Pick a DE (I recommend Gnome 3, but KDE is great too) and learn the shortcut keys. Expect a day or two of spinup time. If you go with Gnome, make use of the Gnome Tweak Tool and the super key shortcuts. Good luck! This is exciting :-)
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  I switched at the beginning of college (oddly enough, before I decided to add a computer science degree or had ever written a line of code), and I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. I've stuck with ThinkPads for hardware compatibility, and I've always been 10x more productive on my machine than anyone I know. On top of that, I've been able to keep 90% of the same habits and config while taking my machine over the years from a prettier-than-Mac Gnome+Compiz setup to a barebones, personalized, blazing fast, low power keyboard-shortcut-driven Openbox setup. The key insight is that if almost ANYTHING about my machine doesn't perfectly fit me, I can make it fit me in about five minutes. Frankly, I consider this table stakes for a competent OS and I don't understand why people put up with being deprived of this (especially devs): over the last decade I haven't been able to shake the feeling that almost everyone else in the personal computer market has been conned.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    I completely agree. The beauty of my system now is that I can make it do whatever I want it to, and I never have to worry about somebody taking it away (open source lives forever. can't say the same about Win XP or old version of OSX). I also never worry about what the corporation behind my OS is doing with my data.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Because some of us have been spoiled with development environments like Smalltalk, Common Lisp IDEs, Delphi, ... with Visual Studio being one of the best. I remember following KDevelop progress hoping that one day it could eventually match what I already had available in Borland and MS tools.
solotronics 9y ago
by dual booting and using Linux for your hardcore development your basically ceding that Windows sucks at this. I agree honestly it's sad that Windows is not POSIX compliant, why can't I run bash, GIT, ssh, and a decent package manager on Windows? that will be it's downfall because the hardcore devs are all on Linux and OS X
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  No, I am ceding that it's easier to develop linux apps on linux. "hardcore devs" on OSX have been deluding themselves for years, myself included. If I would have just buckled down with Linux, I would actually be much further ahead. macOS is really only good for iOS and macOS... nothing else runs it. There is a world of Windows software that is not POSIX and has viable business opportunity. I've been neglecting that because "OSX rules! POSIX or bust!" mentality. I am going to change my mindset.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Hardcore graphics programming devs are on Windows.
  - a_e_k 9y ago
    Those doing games, yes. Those of us doing movies are mostly on Linux. Lots of sci-viz folks are also on Linux.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Not only games, movies and sci-viz rendering have little to do with UI/UX design considerations and tooling for consumer applications. Which is why GNOME and KDE to this day, still need to try to advocate to get more UI/UX developers involved into their projects.
    - pault 9y ago
      Really? I thought video/post-production people were mostly on Macs these days. What are the standard software stacks for doing FX?
disiplus 9y ago
i was in the same boot as OP, ordered maxed out XPS15 whiped windows from them and installed latest version of ubuntu. but i had problems with 4K display, hdpi support in ubuntu is shit if you want different dislplays with different dpis, and wayland is still not really production ready. And then is the support for GPU, drivers for nvidia, it would get so hot that i could almost burn my hands. so i returned the XPS and ordered a new MacBook Pro. Sure touchbar is a gimick, and i dont like new keyboard even after so much time but its better then the alternative.
- distances 9y ago
  XPS machines look nice, but I'd recommend the Dell Latitude line for those who plan to potentially use Linux. The compatibility is just on a different level, and they are pretty nice work horses hardware wise. Latitudes lack that infinity display, sure, but at least I'm almost always using an external monitor anyway. Some of the other features are more subjective, but I also like the matte screen, better keyboard, camera on lid upper edge, support for a docking station, and so on.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  From my experience, both KDE Plasma 5 and GNOME 3 work pretty well on high DPI displays, not so much Unity 7.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    > KDE Plasma 5 and GNOME 3 work pretty well on high DPI displays Not so well on displays with non-integer scale factor (1.25-1.5x). I've somehow managed Plasma & Qt apps to have acceptably sanely sized windows decorations and widgets, but failed to e.g. teach the browsers to calculate sizes correctly (e.g. make a block with `width: 50mm` to have correct size). Biggest GNU/Linux problem is having way too much of the completely different solutions for the roughly the same thing that can't interoperate with each other.
rbanffy 9y ago
Microsoft must hate the dual boot to Linux idea. Once you experience a modern Linux, you'll eventually look at that NTFS partition and decide it'd just be better used as free disk space. For the times you need Windows, there's always VirtualBox.

tagurit 9y ago

As OP mentioned, he probably doesn't want to turn off his system. This is problem I have with a dual boot system, even with the ability to save state. Unless I absolutely have to, I'd rather keep running macOS's

monkmartinez 9y ago
With the problems I see on the mac forums regarding the new MBP's, I don't think turning off the system is going to be much of an issue. That said, I understand not wanting to restart in order to get work done. However, I am looking at it with the perspective that I will be able to fully focus on the tasks at hand (ala Deep Work by Cal Newport), in a distraction free environment.
- isolli 9y ago
  What problems specifically? I'm not following closely, so a summary would be nice :)

latencyloser 9y ago

I'm in a similar predicament to OP. I prefer Linux in most cases, it's what I'm used to. But I need or would vastly prefer one or the other depending on what I'm doing. A VM is fine for just checking outlook..or using Skype for chat and things like that. But the second I need to use an IDE for Windows development, it's too slow to bear. Having better interchangeability between these two would make my life significantly better. Whether that be a stronger Linux subsystem for Windows, or a Windows subsystem for Linux. Of course, I work at Microsoft. That being said, many devs I see are open to or enjoy using Linux--myself included. I think, and hope, we'll see continued growth in support for it. Though, I have little to no influence over such things.

discordance 9y ago
How is the attitude/atmosphere internally at Microsoft towards people using a competing OS (Mac or Linux). Does the group working on Windows OS feel alienated at all?
- latencyloser 9y ago
  In my experience, pretty positive. I see Macs around campus frequently. In my team, people mostly use Windows, so there's definitely no alienation there. However, when people notice I mostly use Linux, I usually receive a chuckle for not using Windows--either out of irony or since we are highly encouraged to dogfood everything here. But that's usually the last I hear of it, so I don't think anyone sees anything wrong with it.
rbanffy 9y ago
There are some ways to improve VM performance. You could try to pre-create the disk volume instead of leaving it dynamic as it usually is, attach a partition directly, or move it to a different disk that'll not interfere with your other apps (my bigger home box has system and apps on one disk, VM volumes and network shares on another). If you do that, your performance hit for disk IO will be very close to zero. A modern CPU will usually not eat up more than 3% per virtualisation layer (at least under KVM). Beyond that, you can assign more cores to the virtual machine and see how it goes. Even a relatively humble i7 laptop has enough power to run Visual Studio with dignity for all but the craziest projects. If we are talking about a beefy Xeon E5 workstation with 64 gigs of memory, you'll probably be able to assign more resources to the Windows VM than Visual Studio knows how to deal with.
mysterydip 9y ago
Not all VM host softwares are created equal. One of the other solutions out there may have higher performance for your needs. As a sibling comment said, there's ways to troubleshoot performance as well. With a modern system and the virtualization instructions baked into CPUs, most VMs should approach "near native" speeds.
- 9y ago

freedomben 9y ago

I did almost this exact thing a few years ago and I've been super happy. Two points of advice: 1. Check hardware compatibility _before_ you order your laptop. Intel video drivers and wifi drivers are open source and reliable. Stay away from Broadcom, and unless you plan to do gaming, stay away from Nvidia (tho modern Ubuntu makes nvidia pretty darn easy). 2. Pick a DE (I recommend Gnome 3, but KDE is great too) and learn the shortcut keys. Expect a day or two of spinup time. If you go with Gnome, make use of the Gnome Tweak Tool and the super key shortcuts. Good luck! This is exciting :-)

wutbrodo 9y ago
I switched at the beginning of college (oddly enough, before I decided to add a computer science degree or had ever written a line of code), and I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. I've stuck with ThinkPads for hardware compatibility, and I've always been 10x more productive on my machine than anyone I know. On top of that, I've been able to keep 90% of the same habits and config while taking my machine over the years from a prettier-than-Mac Gnome+Compiz setup to a barebones, personalized, blazing fast, low power keyboard-shortcut-driven Openbox setup. The key insight is that if almost ANYTHING about my machine doesn't perfectly fit me, I can make it fit me in about five minutes. Frankly, I consider this table stakes for a competent OS and I don't understand why people put up with being deprived of this (especially devs): over the last decade I haven't been able to shake the feeling that almost everyone else in the personal computer market has been conned.
- freedomben 9y ago
  I completely agree. The beauty of my system now is that I can make it do whatever I want it to, and I never have to worry about somebody taking it away (open source lives forever. can't say the same about Win XP or old version of OSX). I also never worry about what the corporation behind my OS is doing with my data.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Because some of us have been spoiled with development environments like Smalltalk, Common Lisp IDEs, Delphi, ... with Visual Studio being one of the best. I remember following KDevelop progress hoping that one day it could eventually match what I already had available in Borland and MS tools.

solotronics 9y ago

by dual booting and using Linux for your hardcore development your basically ceding that Windows sucks at this. I agree honestly it's sad that Windows is not POSIX compliant, why can't I run bash, GIT, ssh, and a decent package manager on Windows? that will be it's downfall because the hardcore devs are all on Linux and OS X

monkmartinez 9y ago
No, I am ceding that it's easier to develop linux apps on linux. "hardcore devs" on OSX have been deluding themselves for years, myself included. If I would have just buckled down with Linux, I would actually be much further ahead. macOS is really only good for iOS and macOS... nothing else runs it. There is a world of Windows software that is not POSIX and has viable business opportunity. I've been neglecting that because "OSX rules! POSIX or bust!" mentality. I am going to change my mindset.
pjmlp 9y ago
Hardcore graphics programming devs are on Windows.
- a_e_k 9y ago
  Those doing games, yes. Those of us doing movies are mostly on Linux. Lots of sci-viz folks are also on Linux.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Not only games, movies and sci-viz rendering have little to do with UI/UX design considerations and tooling for consumer applications. Which is why GNOME and KDE to this day, still need to try to advocate to get more UI/UX developers involved into their projects.
  - pault 9y ago
    Really? I thought video/post-production people were mostly on Macs these days. What are the standard software stacks for doing FX?

disiplus 9y ago

i was in the same boot as OP, ordered maxed out XPS15 whiped windows from them and installed latest version of ubuntu. but i had problems with 4K display, hdpi support in ubuntu is shit if you want different dislplays with different dpis, and wayland is still not really production ready. And then is the support for GPU, drivers for nvidia, it would get so hot that i could almost burn my hands. so i returned the XPS and ordered a new MacBook Pro. Sure touchbar is a gimick, and i dont like new keyboard even after so much time but its better then the alternative.

distances 9y ago
XPS machines look nice, but I'd recommend the Dell Latitude line for those who plan to potentially use Linux. The compatibility is just on a different level, and they are pretty nice work horses hardware wise. Latitudes lack that infinity display, sure, but at least I'm almost always using an external monitor anyway. Some of the other features are more subjective, but I also like the matte screen, better keyboard, camera on lid upper edge, support for a docking station, and so on.
AsyncAwait 9y ago
From my experience, both KDE Plasma 5 and GNOME 3 work pretty well on high DPI displays, not so much Unity 7.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  > KDE Plasma 5 and GNOME 3 work pretty well on high DPI displays Not so well on displays with non-integer scale factor (1.25-1.5x). I've somehow managed Plasma & Qt apps to have acceptably sanely sized windows decorations and widgets, but failed to e.g. teach the browsers to calculate sizes correctly (e.g. make a block with `width: 50mm` to have correct size). Biggest GNU/Linux problem is having way too much of the completely different solutions for the roughly the same thing that can't interoperate with each other.

rbanffy 9y ago

Microsoft must hate the dual boot to Linux idea. Once you experience a modern Linux, you'll eventually look at that NTFS partition and decide it'd just be better used as free disk space. For the times you need Windows, there's always VirtualBox.