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I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once

I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never look back. I haven't in almost 15 years. Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine. Edit: more than 15 years.

Animats 1y ago
That's sort of what Wine does. That's how I run the occasional Windows program on Linux.
NelsonMinar 1y ago
That works pretty well except for gaming. A lot of games detect if they are running in a VM and refuse to let you play, as an anti-cheat measure.
ActorNightly 1y ago
The big difference is hardware access. I used to do VFIO with hardware passthrough so I could have linux but still run windows software like CAD that takes advantage of the gfx card. That was a pain to set up and use. The other way, its very simple. WSL2 can run ML tasks with just a tiny bit of overhead in moving the data to the card.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  PyTorch and most of other ML stuff have native Windows ports.
  - ActorNightly 1y ago
    Yes but the point is to not do dev on windows, because window "terminal" sucks
ghotli 1y ago
Counterpoint: things like the Valve Index for VR simply don't behave well in this environment no matter how much I've worked on getting it there. I'm not a novice either, $dayjob has me working on the lowest levels of Linux on a daily basis. I did linux from scratch on a Pentium 2 when I was 12. All that to say yes I happen to agree but edge cases are out there. The blanket statement doesn't apply for all use cases
- SunlitCat 1y ago
  And even more worse with the Vive Pro 2 by HTC which needs a special Windows tool to use all it capabilities... I would have switched over to Linux if it wouldn't be because of that one.
- rounce 1y ago
  IMO this is the real blindspot: it's VR support, not Photoshop, or MS Office, or CAD tools (all of which I've got running fine via Wine). I'm guessing the intersection between VR users and Wine users must be really small and I suspect it's because of this that support is so lacking.
int_19h 1y ago
If you're in a corporate environment, you often don't have a choice wrt Windows as your primary desktop OS.
kobalsky 1y ago
Running Windows from a ZFS partition with its own dedicated GPU, viewed through looking-glass on the Linux host at 1440p@120Hz, has been super useful. I set it up originally for gaming, but nowaways I install a lot of disposable software there. I use Linux guests VMs too (a la Qubes), but sadly there's no guest support for looking-glass on Linux. Native rendering speeds on VMs are something hard to let go.
arcastroe 1y ago
I've considered it, but there are two Windows features I need that sound like they'd require some time investment to set up correctly on linux. 1. I use UWF on windows (Education Edition). All disk writes to C:/ are ephemeral. On every single reboot, all changes are discarded and my pc is back to the exact same state as when I first set it up. I do keep a separate partition for documents that need persistence. 2. Miracast for screen mirroring.
- prettymuchnoone 1y ago
  as for 1. if you ever have some free time on your hands, and want to take declarative configs to the next level, you can check out Impermanence for NixOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37218289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37218289 and 2...hm I know i've done Miracast before with GNOME Network Displays https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.NetworkDisplays https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.NetworkDisplays
- kasabali 1y ago
  (1) can be done with little to no configuration on default live images of like, every single distribution.
nxobject 1y ago
I always have Windows on Parallels on a Mac, too – unfortunately VirtualBox for arm64 Mac isn't quite there yet.
- stephenr 1y ago
  It is slowly improving (albeit with some egregious bugs, like losing EFI data on export) but TBH even their x86 product pales in comparison to Parallels or VMWare Fusion, in terms of machine performance.
- mdaniel 1y ago
  I think the biggest problem with VirtualBox on arm64 is that it is only for arm64 guests, unlike the qemu-system-x86_64 which colima et al use and allow booting up "normal" guest OSes Also, VBoxManage was created by someone who firmly subscribes to the "git UX is awesome" school of thought :-(
RKFADU_UOFCCLEL 1y ago
That's how I do it. I don't see the draw for Windows as the main OS, especially with Windows 10+ being dumbed down beyond belief and having seconds of lag to do anything at all. Seems even from this thread that people just want the convenience of a gaming rig in the same box as their work (which is a security issue because games are full of remote code execution vulnerabilities).
password4321 1y ago
Related: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-11-enterprise https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-... (edit: not https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...) > We currently package our virtual machines for four different virtualization software options: Hyper-V (Gen2), Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMware. These virtual machines contain an evaluation version of Windows that expires on the date posted. If the evaluation period expires, the desktop background will turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut down every hour. Edit: Oops, dead link -- the dev tools evaluation VM hasn't been released for 6+ months. But they do offer Windows evaluations ISO's after registration.
MrPowerGamerBR 1y ago
Except that if you require anything that is GPU-related (like gaming, Adobe suite apps, etc) you'll need to have a secondary GPU to passthrough it to the VM, which is not something that everyone has. So, if you don't have a secondary GPU, you'll need to live without graphics acceleration in the VM... so for a lot of people the "oh you just need to use a VM!" solution is not feasible, because most of the software that people want to use that does not run under WINE do require graphics acceleration. I tried running Photoshop under a VM, but the performance of the QEMU QXL driver is bad, and VirGL does not support Windows guests yet. VMWare and VirtualBox do have better graphics drivers that do support Windows. I tried using VMWare and the performance was "ok", but still not near the performance of Photoshop on "bare metal".
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  Quite a lot of people have both integrated Intel graphics and a discrete AMD/NVidia card.
  - MrPowerGamerBR 1y ago
    Sadly I'm not one of those people because I have a desktop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which does not have an integrated graphics card. However now that AMD is including integrated GPUs on every AM5 consumer CPU (if I'm not mistaken?), maybe VMs with passthrough will be more common, without requiring people to spend a lot of money buying a secondary GPU.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      Yes, my Ryzen 7600 has an integrated GPU enabled. AMD's iGPUs are really impressive and powerful, but I do not have any idea what to do with it and despite that I moved to an Nvidia GPU (after 20 years of fanboyism) specifically because I was tired of AMD drivers being terrible on Windows, I STILL have to deal with AMD drivers because of that damn iGPU. I could disable it I guess. It could provide 0.05% faster rendering if I ever get back into blender.
- hermitShell 1y ago
Aurornis 1y ago
> I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. Every Windows thread on HN is a reminder of the stark divide between people who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who don’t. The apps I need a Windows machine for are not the kind that virtualize nicely. Anything GPU related means Windows has to become the base OS for me. If you’re running an occasional light tool you can get away with Windows in a VM, but it’s a no-go for things like CAD or games.
- zargon 1y ago
  I prefer to just have two (or three) GPUs than have Windows as the base OS.
- luyu_wu 1y ago
  If you can GPU passthrough (it's quite simple to set up), this is not a large issue. You're right that Linux is sorely lacking in native creative software though!
- einpoklum 1y ago
  > who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who don’t. LibreOffice has gotten quite good over the years, including decent(ish) MSO file format interoperability, and Thunderbird seems to support Exchange Server. So, I suppose things like MS Project or MS Visio many not have decent counterparts (maybe, I don't really know), but otherwise, it seems like you don't need-need to use Windows for productivity apps.
  - stackskipton 1y ago
    Last I looked, Thunderbird used Exchange Web Services to connect to Office365 which Microsoft is getting rid of: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement-of-exchange-web-services-in-exchange-online/3924440 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement... (I point out Office365 since vast majority of "Exchange" users are on 365) It also only support email and not calendaring/contacts. That being said, Office365 Web Client is pretty good at this point and someone who doesn't live in Office all day can probably get along fine with it.
rfoo 1y ago
Okay. Then you had a Mac. Then you need to run Linux in a VM anyway because similar to Windows, macOS is also a dumpster fire. Then why bother? You are going to have a Linux VM anyway. I usually just sync my VM disk between all my laptops & desktops, no matter what host OS it runs.
KZerda 1y ago
I used Linux as my daily driver for years, before finally switching back to Windows, and then to the Mac. I got tired of things like wine breaking on apps, I got tired of the half-assed replacements for software available on Windows, like GIMP compared to Photoshop. I got tired of the ugly desktop that inevitably occurs once you start needing to mix QT and GTK based apps. Linux is not a panacea.
- herbst 1y ago
  I love how subjective these things are. I hate the half assed commercialised approached for software on both Mac and Windows where you download 50mb+ of electron bullshit for a bash 2 liner with default tools on Linux. Mostly for windows but when I installed 5+ tools from untrustworthy websites (which they all look like if you aren't used to that) it feels like my computer is likely forever busted with some scamware. But there is no dd, no proper editor, no removing adware and "news" without these tools. On windows if you want to configure something it's like going into a computer museum where you start in the metro area and end up in UIs straight out of win 95. That's better on Mac, but the UI is depressing (in my opinion) and I always had the feeling my Mac wouldn't need to run that hot if it wouldn't draw shadows, mirroring and weird effects I haven't asked for. That said. Linux is not a panacea
montymintypie 1y ago
It's funny, more than any productivity app (though I do have a few of those), the Directory Opus [1] Explorer replacement is one of the things that I've yet to find a viable replacement for on both Linux and macOS. Unparalleled customisability, scriptable actions, outstanding performance (thumbnailing 10,000 images in a folder never causes slowdown), incredible search and "huh, why doesn't anyone else do this" features everywhere. I use my file explorer a lot so the friction is felt daily. I'm using Forklift [2] on my mac at work, but it's a pale imitation of what a file explorer can truly be. I did some searching for Linux but it's all pretty pedestrian. [1]: https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ [2]: https://binarynights.com/ https://binarynights.com/
nlawalker 1y ago
I feel like every conversation about this is the bell curve/midwit meme[1], with the middle being the argument over “Windows VM on Linux” and “Linux VM on windows”, and the edges being “own multiple computers”. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit
- voidspark 1y ago
  [dead]
- soygem 1y ago
  [dead]
ho_schi 1y ago
Right! Use Linux, because it is your preference [1]. It doesn't cause harm (side-effects: incompatibility and vendor lock-in, due to mass-effect) to others. We need to remember why Microsoft uses WSL. Microsoft wants to prevent users (i.e. developers) to migrate on Linux. It is the old approach Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish [2]. Monopolies are made by users and politics, because we don't consider vendor lock-in and mass-effect. I wish strong regulation for all information-technology. We saw the wonderful effects of regulation with AT&T {UNIX, C, Open-Source, Open-Documentation} and then a mistake was done. The company was split up, looking back a complete failure. [1] Means: It is a better operating-system and adapt to users needs. Either novice user or programmer. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
icemelt8 1y ago
You haven't used Photoshop for 15 years?

Animats 1y ago

That's sort of what Wine does. That's how I run the occasional Windows program on Linux.

NelsonMinar 1y ago

That works pretty well except for gaming. A lot of games detect if they are running in a VM and refuse to let you play, as an anti-cheat measure.

ActorNightly 1y ago

The big difference is hardware access. I used to do VFIO with hardware passthrough so I could have linux but still run windows software like CAD that takes advantage of the gfx card. That was a pain to set up and use. The other way, its very simple. WSL2 can run ML tasks with just a tiny bit of overhead in moving the data to the card.

lostmsu 1y ago
PyTorch and most of other ML stuff have native Windows ports.
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  Yes but the point is to not do dev on windows, because window "terminal" sucks

ghotli 1y ago

Counterpoint: things like the Valve Index for VR simply don't behave well in this environment no matter how much I've worked on getting it there. I'm not a novice either, $dayjob has me working on the lowest levels of Linux on a daily basis. I did linux from scratch on a Pentium 2 when I was 12. All that to say yes I happen to agree but edge cases are out there. The blanket statement doesn't apply for all use cases

SunlitCat 1y ago
And even more worse with the Vive Pro 2 by HTC which needs a special Windows tool to use all it capabilities... I would have switched over to Linux if it wouldn't be because of that one.
rounce 1y ago
IMO this is the real blindspot: it's VR support, not Photoshop, or MS Office, or CAD tools (all of which I've got running fine via Wine). I'm guessing the intersection between VR users and Wine users must be really small and I suspect it's because of this that support is so lacking.

int_19h 1y ago

If you're in a corporate environment, you often don't have a choice wrt Windows as your primary desktop OS.

kobalsky 1y ago

Running Windows from a ZFS partition with its own dedicated GPU, viewed through looking-glass on the Linux host at 1440p@120Hz, has been super useful. I set it up originally for gaming, but nowaways I install a lot of disposable software there. I use Linux guests VMs too (a la Qubes), but sadly there's no guest support for looking-glass on Linux. Native rendering speeds on VMs are something hard to let go.

arcastroe 1y ago

I've considered it, but there are two Windows features I need that sound like they'd require some time investment to set up correctly on linux. 1. I use UWF on windows (Education Edition). All disk writes to C:/ are ephemeral. On every single reboot, all changes are discarded and my pc is back to the exact same state as when I first set it up. I do keep a separate partition for documents that need persistence. 2. Miracast for screen mirroring.

prettymuchnoone 1y ago
as for 1. if you ever have some free time on your hands, and want to take declarative configs to the next level, you can check out Impermanence for NixOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37218289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37218289 and 2...hm I know i've done Miracast before with GNOME Network Displays https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.NetworkDisplays https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.NetworkDisplays
kasabali 1y ago
(1) can be done with little to no configuration on default live images of like, every single distribution.

nxobject 1y ago

I always have Windows on Parallels on a Mac, too – unfortunately VirtualBox for arm64 Mac isn't quite there yet.

stephenr 1y ago
It is slowly improving (albeit with some egregious bugs, like losing EFI data on export) but TBH even their x86 product pales in comparison to Parallels or VMWare Fusion, in terms of machine performance.
mdaniel 1y ago
I think the biggest problem with VirtualBox on arm64 is that it is only for arm64 guests, unlike the qemu-system-x86_64 which colima et al use and allow booting up "normal" guest OSes Also, VBoxManage was created by someone who firmly subscribes to the "git UX is awesome" school of thought :-(

RKFADU_UOFCCLEL 1y ago

That's how I do it. I don't see the draw for Windows as the main OS, especially with Windows 10+ being dumbed down beyond belief and having seconds of lag to do anything at all. Seems even from this thread that people just want the convenience of a gaming rig in the same box as their work (which is a security issue because games are full of remote code execution vulnerabilities).

password4321 1y ago

Related: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-11-enterprise https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-... (edit: not https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...) > We currently package our virtual machines for four different virtualization software options: Hyper-V (Gen2), Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMware. These virtual machines contain an evaluation version of Windows that expires on the date posted. If the evaluation period expires, the desktop background will turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut down every hour. Edit: Oops, dead link -- the dev tools evaluation VM hasn't been released for 6+ months. But they do offer Windows evaluations ISO's after registration.

MrPowerGamerBR 1y ago

Except that if you require anything that is GPU-related (like gaming, Adobe suite apps, etc) you'll need to have a secondary GPU to passthrough it to the VM, which is not something that everyone has. So, if you don't have a secondary GPU, you'll need to live without graphics acceleration in the VM... so for a lot of people the "oh you just need to use a VM!" solution is not feasible, because most of the software that people want to use that does not run under WINE do require graphics acceleration. I tried running Photoshop under a VM, but the performance of the QEMU QXL driver is bad, and VirGL does not support Windows guests yet. VMWare and VirtualBox do have better graphics drivers that do support Windows. I tried using VMWare and the performance was "ok", but still not near the performance of Photoshop on "bare metal".

teaearlgraycold 1y ago
Quite a lot of people have both integrated Intel graphics and a discrete AMD/NVidia card.
- MrPowerGamerBR 1y ago
  Sadly I'm not one of those people because I have a desktop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which does not have an integrated graphics card. However now that AMD is including integrated GPUs on every AM5 consumer CPU (if I'm not mistaken?), maybe VMs with passthrough will be more common, without requiring people to spend a lot of money buying a secondary GPU.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Yes, my Ryzen 7600 has an integrated GPU enabled. AMD's iGPUs are really impressive and powerful, but I do not have any idea what to do with it and despite that I moved to an Nvidia GPU (after 20 years of fanboyism) specifically because I was tired of AMD drivers being terrible on Windows, I STILL have to deal with AMD drivers because of that damn iGPU. I could disable it I guess. It could provide 0.05% faster rendering if I ever get back into blender.
hermitShell 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

> I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. Every Windows thread on HN is a reminder of the stark divide between people who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who don’t. The apps I need a Windows machine for are not the kind that virtualize nicely. Anything GPU related means Windows has to become the base OS for me. If you’re running an occasional light tool you can get away with Windows in a VM, but it’s a no-go for things like CAD or games.

zargon 1y ago
I prefer to just have two (or three) GPUs than have Windows as the base OS.
luyu_wu 1y ago
If you can GPU passthrough (it's quite simple to set up), this is not a large issue. You're right that Linux is sorely lacking in native creative software though!
einpoklum 1y ago
> who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who don’t. LibreOffice has gotten quite good over the years, including decent(ish) MSO file format interoperability, and Thunderbird seems to support Exchange Server. So, I suppose things like MS Project or MS Visio many not have decent counterparts (maybe, I don't really know), but otherwise, it seems like you don't need-need to use Windows for productivity apps.
- stackskipton 1y ago
  Last I looked, Thunderbird used Exchange Web Services to connect to Office365 which Microsoft is getting rid of: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement-of-exchange-web-services-in-exchange-online/3924440 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement... (I point out Office365 since vast majority of "Exchange" users are on 365) It also only support email and not calendaring/contacts. That being said, Office365 Web Client is pretty good at this point and someone who doesn't live in Office all day can probably get along fine with it.

rfoo 1y ago

Okay. Then you had a Mac. Then you need to run Linux in a VM anyway because similar to Windows, macOS is also a dumpster fire. Then why bother? You are going to have a Linux VM anyway. I usually just sync my VM disk between all my laptops & desktops, no matter what host OS it runs.

KZerda 1y ago

I used Linux as my daily driver for years, before finally switching back to Windows, and then to the Mac. I got tired of things like wine breaking on apps, I got tired of the half-assed replacements for software available on Windows, like GIMP compared to Photoshop. I got tired of the ugly desktop that inevitably occurs once you start needing to mix QT and GTK based apps. Linux is not a panacea.

herbst 1y ago
I love how subjective these things are. I hate the half assed commercialised approached for software on both Mac and Windows where you download 50mb+ of electron bullshit for a bash 2 liner with default tools on Linux. Mostly for windows but when I installed 5+ tools from untrustworthy websites (which they all look like if you aren't used to that) it feels like my computer is likely forever busted with some scamware. But there is no dd, no proper editor, no removing adware and "news" without these tools. On windows if you want to configure something it's like going into a computer museum where you start in the metro area and end up in UIs straight out of win 95. That's better on Mac, but the UI is depressing (in my opinion) and I always had the feeling my Mac wouldn't need to run that hot if it wouldn't draw shadows, mirroring and weird effects I haven't asked for. That said. Linux is not a panacea

montymintypie 1y ago

It's funny, more than any productivity app (though I do have a few of those), the Directory Opus [1] Explorer replacement is one of the things that I've yet to find a viable replacement for on both Linux and macOS. Unparalleled customisability, scriptable actions, outstanding performance (thumbnailing 10,000 images in a folder never causes slowdown), incredible search and "huh, why doesn't anyone else do this" features everywhere. I use my file explorer a lot so the friction is felt daily. I'm using Forklift [2] on my mac at work, but it's a pale imitation of what a file explorer can truly be. I did some searching for Linux but it's all pretty pedestrian. [1]: https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ [2]: https://binarynights.com/ https://binarynights.com/

nlawalker 1y ago

I feel like every conversation about this is the bell curve/midwit meme[1], with the middle being the argument over “Windows VM on Linux” and “Linux VM on windows”, and the edges being “own multiple computers”. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit

voidspark 1y ago
[dead]
soygem 1y ago
[dead]

ho_schi 1y ago

Right! Use Linux, because it is your preference [1]. It doesn't cause harm (side-effects: incompatibility and vendor lock-in, due to mass-effect) to others. We need to remember why Microsoft uses WSL. Microsoft wants to prevent users (i.e. developers) to migrate on Linux. It is the old approach Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish [2]. Monopolies are made by users and politics, because we don't consider vendor lock-in and mass-effect. I wish strong regulation for all information-technology. We saw the wonderful effects of regulation with AT&T {UNIX, C, Open-Source, Open-Documentation} and then a mistake was done. The company was split up, looking back a complete failure. [1] Means: It is a better operating-system and adapt to users needs. Either novice user or programmer. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

icemelt8 1y ago

You haven't used Photoshop for 15 years?