7 ms·

Or, hear me out, buy cheap SSD for each operating system. For as low as $200 you can have a solid operating system of any flavor. Not an option because you're r

Or, hear me out, buy cheap SSD for each operating system. For as low as $200 you can have a solid operating system of any flavor. Not an option because you're running thing on laptop and is not good to tear the laptop apart to replace SSD? OK, then how about: Run each operating system in it's own VM and you can encrypt its folder. Not an option because you want to use games on your Windows and those are notoriously difficult to run inside a VM? OK, then how about: Run a hypervisor on bare metal, like VMWare ESXi. You get now each operating system to be running on bare metal just like if it's alone and on Windows you can definitely play those notorious difficult games.

meddlepal 6y ago
> Run a hypervisor on bare metal, like VMWare ESXi. You get now each operating system to be running on bare metal just like if it's alone and on Windows you can definitely play those notorious difficult games. This is exactly how WSL2 works. Windows and Linux run as guests under Hyper-V.
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Hyper-V would not be able to run Red Dead Redemption 2. VMware ESXi with a Win10 guest OS can.
  - meddlepal 6y ago
    Wat? I play games all the time on my Windows 10 + WSL2 setup.... which is exactly as I described: Windows running as a guest under Hyper-V alongside Linux.
    - unnouinceput 6y ago
      And you have RDR2 running in that configuration? I mean to run RDR2 in your Windows guest OS that runs under Hyper-V? Because I tried that and it won't run. I could only run it under VMWare ESXi
      - ninjaoxygen 6y ago
        I believe the point he is making is that the games can run in the native Windows above Hyper-V and then WSL2 / other Linux installs can be run under Hyper-V from the native Windows OS.
        tobi1449 6y ago
        As far as I understood it, Hyper-V is a native hypervisor like Xen or ESXi. So if you're using Hyper-V even your Windows is running as Guest alongside any other Hyper-V VMs and WSL2.
        lights0123 6y ago
        Yes, although it has a "root partition", which could only be Windows up until a month ago[0]. [0]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200914112802.80611-1-wei.liu@kernel.org/T/#me859932ac743c7d96aa06f32976723d357196086 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200914112802.80611-1-wei.liu@...
      - unionpivo 6y ago
        yes, And I can have running wsl2 session with RDR2 running. as far as I can tell, enabling wsl2 (thus hyperV) did not slow down windows in any meaningful way I could find.
  - bananadonkey 6y ago
    I was also confused by this recently. Enabling wsl2 enables Windows' "virtual machine platform", which Windows itself will then run on top of as a guest. And yes RDR2 is running stable 100fps uwqhd at max settings on my machine under these conditions.
    - bananadonkey 6y ago
      I tried to find the official doc that explains it clearly, but cannot otherwise I'd share.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- pizza234 6y ago
  This depends on which O/S one considers primary, and which are their requirements. For example, this architecture prevents other hypervisors from running¹. If one wants to run, say, a fancy filesystem that is native (to Linux) and/or stable, again, one can't. If one considers Linux the primary O/S, they could give a shot at VGA passthrough - I assume that if the system supports ESXi, it should support VGA passthrough as well. I personally prefer it to a native Windows - besides not having to perform reboots (which is minor), I like to have a snapshottable system. The caveat is that if one wants a very stable guest, they should reserve the GPU for that purpose (I do). [¹] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq
core-questions 6y ago
Can you get an OS running on a bare metal hypervisor to have video output? Does PCI passthrough work well enough to do that?
- ashtonian 6y ago
  Yes
secondcoming 6y ago
Bingo. VMs are totally underrated. I can't remember the last time I had a dual-boot setup.
smarx007 6y ago
How would you run ESXi on a bare metal laptop with the ability to easily switch between multiple GUI guests?
- ashtonian 6y ago
  Def wouldn't be fun due to one video card pass through. You would have to remote in and swap pass through or just use one without gpu
jnxx 6y ago
> Not an option because you're running thing on laptop and is not good to tear the laptop apart to replace SSD? One still can put the less used system into an external SSD and boot from that. Much simpler. The lengths some people go to continue working with Windows and the hassle they are putting up with for that amazes me.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  > The lengths some people go to continue working with Windows and the hassle they are putting up with for that amazes me. Agreed, even gaming on Linux has progressed to the point that unless you're a competitive gamer you can play nearly any Windows game on Linux thanks to Valve's Proton, as well as the advancements made by the Wine team and the growing Vulkan support by game developers.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Tarkov disagrees
    - 1_player 6y ago
      In fact it disagrees twice: I used to run Windows in a VM with GPU passthrough, performance was excellent, but I still couldn't play Escape from Tarkov as its anti-cheat allegedly started kicking or even banning users running the game in a VM. There are workarounds to hide the fact that you're running a VM from the guest, but it's not worth the effort and in fact the more workarounds you apply, the higher the chance of getting banned if you trip their detection code. Other than dumb anticheat software, gaming on a Windows VM is feasible, if not expensive, when Proton doesn't work.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    Does that also include the anti-cheat crap that is required for any online play these days?
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    As a linux only gamer, I wouldn't say "nearly every game". Proton has normal wine issues. Check ProtonDB for a compatability rating before buying any windows game on steam. Most all of the games worth playing (factorio, subnautica, KPS etc) either have native linux clients or work fine via proton/wine, but the latest and greatest non-indi titles generally don't. Anti-cheat/DRM/spyware is a linux killer because it wants to inspect the operating system during play. Whatever the latest batman game is called... it probably doesn't work.
yamrzou 6y ago
Could someone explain what VMWare ESXi is? Is is just another Unix-like operating system? Is it compatible with things like Nvidia GPUs?
- stinkyball 6y ago
  It’s VMware’s hypervisor. It installs to bare metal and you run vm’s on top of it.
- thebruce87m 6y ago
  It’s an operating system itself but it’s only job is to allow you to run virtual machines. It has a web gui allowing you to vnc* and interact with the virtual machines using only your browser, or you can install apps on your PC for a better experience. You can limit the resources that each VM has, only a portion of the RAM, only some of the CPU threads etc. It has a free version, but IIRC the free version limits you to 8 CPU threads per VM. You can also pass through hardware to an individual VM, .e.g. a whole graphics card and a USB keyboard/mouse. This means that if you were looking at the monitor and using the keyboard/mouse then you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a VM. If you had two of each peripheral, you could run two local machines from a single tower. I think Linus did something similar with unraid (same idea) and ran 8 (?) gaming VMs from a single tower using 8 GPUs, 8 monitors etc. Note that nvidia doesn’t like you using GPUs in VMs and actively fights against it in the drivers but there are workarounds. *not actually vnc, something propriety.
checkyoursudo 6y ago
One OS per SSD is what I do on my desktop. Though these days the only thing I have been using Windows for really is Matlab (anyone get matlab working in Wine or otherwise?), so I really probably could just run a VM now. My progression has been: -> 2000 dual-boot Gentoo/Windows (mostly because of gaming) -> 2012 (? I think, maybe 2014) Gentoo host with Qemu guest Windows GPU Passthrough (which was still sort of a dual boot since I could actually boot into that Windows SSD normally) -> whenever proton came out, Gentoo 99% of the time and rarely boot into Windows getting rid of GPU/SSD passthrough because it was cool but ultimately too much hassle -> now almost never boot into Windows (once every few months) except when working with one specific researcher who only uses Matlab, because Win is where my working Matlab install is ... Inertia has kept the dual boot around because I don't want to set it all up again in a VM really.
- jpm48 6y ago
  I use matlab under linux it works fine for my usage is there anything specific that doesn't work that means you need windows?
  - checkyoursudo 6y ago
    I guess it's been years since I tried. It seems that Matlab does work fine in Linux now? Based on a quick search, that seems to be the case. I'll give it a go. Thanks for your comment.
- fsflover 6y ago
  > (anyone get matlab working in Wine or otherwise?) Perhaps you could try GNU Octave.
  - gmadsen 6y ago
    octave is not a 1-1 replacement. If you are sharing and contributing to a matlab project, you probably want to run it in matlab
fsflover 6y ago
> Run a hypervisor on bare metal This is how Qubes OS works: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org. Yes, video passthrough should be possible: https://qubes-os.discourse.group/t/list-of-programs-that-work-with-qubes/212/6 https://qubes-os.discourse.group/t/list-of-programs-that-wor....
cacois 6y ago
Run ESXI on my laptop, got it. That sounds reasonable for most users ;)
jamesgeck0 6y ago
> Or, hear me out, buy cheap SSD for each operating system. Probably gonna need a tutorial for that, too. Was trying to set that up this weekend, but there didn’t seem to be an obvious option for dual booting with full disk encryption in the Ubuntu installer.
- yabones 6y ago
  No special configuration is needed, as long as the EFI partition, the `/boot` partition, and the root filesystem (or LVM etc) are all on the same drive. Windows will overwrite the bootloader on its own disk but doesn't touch others.
treis 6y ago
>Or, hear me out, buy cheap SSD for each operating system. For as low as $200 You can get a 240gb SSD for less than $30 these days.
- paulcarroty 6y ago
  Can you recommend one which don't die fast?
  - treis 6y ago
    Honestly, I don't really know anything about their reliability. I got the Kingston A400 because it was a name brand and it hasn't died yet. So that as a sample of 1 is fine.

meddlepal 6y ago

> Run a hypervisor on bare metal, like VMWare ESXi. You get now each operating system to be running on bare metal just like if it's alone and on Windows you can definitely play those notorious difficult games. This is exactly how WSL2 works. Windows and Linux run as guests under Hyper-V.

unnouinceput 6y ago
Hyper-V would not be able to run Red Dead Redemption 2. VMware ESXi with a Win10 guest OS can.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  Wat? I play games all the time on my Windows 10 + WSL2 setup.... which is exactly as I described: Windows running as a guest under Hyper-V alongside Linux.
  - unnouinceput 6y ago
    And you have RDR2 running in that configuration? I mean to run RDR2 in your Windows guest OS that runs under Hyper-V? Because I tried that and it won't run. I could only run it under VMWare ESXi
    - ninjaoxygen 6y ago
      I believe the point he is making is that the games can run in the native Windows above Hyper-V and then WSL2 / other Linux installs can be run under Hyper-V from the native Windows OS.
      - tobi1449 6y ago
        As far as I understood it, Hyper-V is a native hypervisor like Xen or ESXi. So if you're using Hyper-V even your Windows is running as Guest alongside any other Hyper-V VMs and WSL2.
        lights0123 6y ago
        Yes, although it has a "root partition", which could only be Windows up until a month ago[0]. [0]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200914112802.80611-1-wei.liu@kernel.org/T/#me859932ac743c7d96aa06f32976723d357196086 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200914112802.80611-1-wei.liu@...
    - unionpivo 6y ago
      yes, And I can have running wsl2 session with RDR2 running. as far as I can tell, enabling wsl2 (thus hyperV) did not slow down windows in any meaningful way I could find.
- bananadonkey 6y ago
  I was also confused by this recently. Enabling wsl2 enables Windows' "virtual machine platform", which Windows itself will then run on top of as a guest. And yes RDR2 is running stable 100fps uwqhd at max settings on my machine under these conditions.
  - bananadonkey 6y ago
    I tried to find the official doc that explains it clearly, but cannot otherwise I'd share.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
pizza234 6y ago
This depends on which O/S one considers primary, and which are their requirements. For example, this architecture prevents other hypervisors from running¹. If one wants to run, say, a fancy filesystem that is native (to Linux) and/or stable, again, one can't. If one considers Linux the primary O/S, they could give a shot at VGA passthrough - I assume that if the system supports ESXi, it should support VGA passthrough as well. I personally prefer it to a native Windows - besides not having to perform reboots (which is minor), I like to have a snapshottable system. The caveat is that if one wants a very stable guest, they should reserve the GPU for that purpose (I do). [¹] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq

core-questions 6y ago

Can you get an OS running on a bare metal hypervisor to have video output? Does PCI passthrough work well enough to do that?

ashtonian 6y ago
Yes

secondcoming 6y ago

Bingo. VMs are totally underrated. I can't remember the last time I had a dual-boot setup.

smarx007 6y ago

How would you run ESXi on a bare metal laptop with the ability to easily switch between multiple GUI guests?

ashtonian 6y ago
Def wouldn't be fun due to one video card pass through. You would have to remote in and swap pass through or just use one without gpu

jnxx 6y ago

> Not an option because you're running thing on laptop and is not good to tear the laptop apart to replace SSD? One still can put the less used system into an external SSD and boot from that. Much simpler. The lengths some people go to continue working with Windows and the hassle they are putting up with for that amazes me.

morganvachon 6y ago
> The lengths some people go to continue working with Windows and the hassle they are putting up with for that amazes me. Agreed, even gaming on Linux has progressed to the point that unless you're a competitive gamer you can play nearly any Windows game on Linux thanks to Valve's Proton, as well as the advancements made by the Wine team and the growing Vulkan support by game developers.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Tarkov disagrees
  - 1_player 6y ago
    In fact it disagrees twice: I used to run Windows in a VM with GPU passthrough, performance was excellent, but I still couldn't play Escape from Tarkov as its anti-cheat allegedly started kicking or even banning users running the game in a VM. There are workarounds to hide the fact that you're running a VM from the guest, but it's not worth the effort and in fact the more workarounds you apply, the higher the chance of getting banned if you trip their detection code. Other than dumb anticheat software, gaming on a Windows VM is feasible, if not expensive, when Proton doesn't work.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Does that also include the anti-cheat crap that is required for any online play these days?
- sandworm101 6y ago
  As a linux only gamer, I wouldn't say "nearly every game". Proton has normal wine issues. Check ProtonDB for a compatability rating before buying any windows game on steam. Most all of the games worth playing (factorio, subnautica, KPS etc) either have native linux clients or work fine via proton/wine, but the latest and greatest non-indi titles generally don't. Anti-cheat/DRM/spyware is a linux killer because it wants to inspect the operating system during play. Whatever the latest batman game is called... it probably doesn't work.

yamrzou 6y ago

Could someone explain what VMWare ESXi is? Is is just another Unix-like operating system? Is it compatible with things like Nvidia GPUs?

stinkyball 6y ago
It’s VMware’s hypervisor. It installs to bare metal and you run vm’s on top of it.
thebruce87m 6y ago
It’s an operating system itself but it’s only job is to allow you to run virtual machines. It has a web gui allowing you to vnc* and interact with the virtual machines using only your browser, or you can install apps on your PC for a better experience. You can limit the resources that each VM has, only a portion of the RAM, only some of the CPU threads etc. It has a free version, but IIRC the free version limits you to 8 CPU threads per VM. You can also pass through hardware to an individual VM, .e.g. a whole graphics card and a USB keyboard/mouse. This means that if you were looking at the monitor and using the keyboard/mouse then you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a VM. If you had two of each peripheral, you could run two local machines from a single tower. I think Linus did something similar with unraid (same idea) and ran 8 (?) gaming VMs from a single tower using 8 GPUs, 8 monitors etc. Note that nvidia doesn’t like you using GPUs in VMs and actively fights against it in the drivers but there are workarounds. *not actually vnc, something propriety.

checkyoursudo 6y ago

One OS per SSD is what I do on my desktop. Though these days the only thing I have been using Windows for really is Matlab (anyone get matlab working in Wine or otherwise?), so I really probably could just run a VM now. My progression has been: -> 2000 dual-boot Gentoo/Windows (mostly because of gaming) -> 2012 (? I think, maybe 2014) Gentoo host with Qemu guest Windows GPU Passthrough (which was still sort of a dual boot since I could actually boot into that Windows SSD normally) -> whenever proton came out, Gentoo 99% of the time and rarely boot into Windows getting rid of GPU/SSD passthrough because it was cool but ultimately too much hassle -> now almost never boot into Windows (once every few months) except when working with one specific researcher who only uses Matlab, because Win is where my working Matlab install is ... Inertia has kept the dual boot around because I don't want to set it all up again in a VM really.

jpm48 6y ago
I use matlab under linux it works fine for my usage is there anything specific that doesn't work that means you need windows?
- checkyoursudo 6y ago
  I guess it's been years since I tried. It seems that Matlab does work fine in Linux now? Based on a quick search, that seems to be the case. I'll give it a go. Thanks for your comment.
fsflover 6y ago
> (anyone get matlab working in Wine or otherwise?) Perhaps you could try GNU Octave.
- gmadsen 6y ago
  octave is not a 1-1 replacement. If you are sharing and contributing to a matlab project, you probably want to run it in matlab

fsflover 6y ago

> Run a hypervisor on bare metal This is how Qubes OS works: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org. Yes, video passthrough should be possible: https://qubes-os.discourse.group/t/list-of-programs-that-work-with-qubes/212/6 https://qubes-os.discourse.group/t/list-of-programs-that-wor....

cacois 6y ago

Run ESXI on my laptop, got it. That sounds reasonable for most users ;)

jamesgeck0 6y ago

> Or, hear me out, buy cheap SSD for each operating system. Probably gonna need a tutorial for that, too. Was trying to set that up this weekend, but there didn’t seem to be an obvious option for dual booting with full disk encryption in the Ubuntu installer.

yabones 6y ago
No special configuration is needed, as long as the EFI partition, the `/boot` partition, and the root filesystem (or LVM etc) are all on the same drive. Windows will overwrite the bootloader on its own disk but doesn't touch others.

treis 6y ago

>Or, hear me out, buy cheap SSD for each operating system. For as low as $200 You can get a 240gb SSD for less than $30 these days.

paulcarroty 6y ago
Can you recommend one which don't die fast?
- treis 6y ago
  Honestly, I don't really know anything about their reliability. I got the Kingston A400 because it was a name brand and it hasn't died yet. So that as a sample of 1 is fine.