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Curious what kinds of problems you used to run into here that made you give up on Windows guest/Linux host. I've been running my daily driver that way for the p

Curious what kinds of problems you used to run into here that made you give up on Windows guest/Linux host. I've been running my daily driver that way for the past 3 months and haven't hit any issues aside from 2 nits: - Windows 10 basically requires an SSD to get reasonable responsiveness. You could maybe get away with putting a disk image on an SSD, but for serious use it's best to dedicate a whole disk or partition to it. - QEMU's default display adapter started "leaking" pending IO requests at one point, which grinds the VM from full speed to a halt over the course of an hour or so. I ended up disabling the display adapter and moving to just RDP, which is basically an even trade since the RDP client can do everything the SPICE client can.

rbanffy 6y ago
> You could maybe get away with putting a disk image on an SSD You can preallocate the disk image for the VM. It's reasonable. YMMV and I don't do anything resembling heavy lifting on the Windows machines.
michaelcampbell 6y ago
It was probably closer to 8 years ago, so SSD's weren't really available. Given the time I really don't remember the specifics but it was a work-from-home job so we did a lot of video conferencing pre-Zoom, and used Skype and other tools a lot. IIRC, the windows apps we used didn't like not being close to the video hardware. Running a Linux VM was pretty friction-free, and I could use all the company mandated tools that had to be run in Windows simultaneously without performance issues. WIth a windows guest, I wouldn't run it unless I needed one of those tools, but that required a fairly long spin-up time. Like I said... almost a decade ago so they probably aren't problems now. I'm running Linux native right now, but again for the ease of corporate support, I may go with Windows + WSL2 for my next refresh.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  > and used Skype and other tools a lot. IIRC, the windows apps we used didn't like not being close to the video hardware. Indeed. I used to keep a Windows box for the smartcard reader bureaucratic obligations with the Brazilian government that I never managed to accurately emulate on VMs. I'm happy things are much better now.

rbanffy 6y ago

> You could maybe get away with putting a disk image on an SSD You can preallocate the disk image for the VM. It's reasonable. YMMV and I don't do anything resembling heavy lifting on the Windows machines.

michaelcampbell 6y ago

It was probably closer to 8 years ago, so SSD's weren't really available. Given the time I really don't remember the specifics but it was a work-from-home job so we did a lot of video conferencing pre-Zoom, and used Skype and other tools a lot. IIRC, the windows apps we used didn't like not being close to the video hardware. Running a Linux VM was pretty friction-free, and I could use all the company mandated tools that had to be run in Windows simultaneously without performance issues. WIth a windows guest, I wouldn't run it unless I needed one of those tools, but that required a fairly long spin-up time. Like I said... almost a decade ago so they probably aren't problems now. I'm running Linux native right now, but again for the ease of corporate support, I may go with Windows + WSL2 for my next refresh.

rbanffy 6y ago
> and used Skype and other tools a lot. IIRC, the windows apps we used didn't like not being close to the video hardware. Indeed. I used to keep a Windows box for the smartcard reader bureaucratic obligations with the Brazilian government that I never managed to accurately emulate on VMs. I'm happy things are much better now.