[GTALUG] VM decisions for school laptop..

[Alvin Starr]

On 04/11/2018 08:05 PM, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> My son is off to university for CS this fall, and will need a laptop. 
> I'm looking at purchasing one for him, so he can run Windows and 
> Linux. I'm figuring on going the VM route.
>
> He can use both OS's but is probably more familiar with Win, and his 
> courses mandate a number of windows only tools. I'm heading in the 
> direction of booting Win10 and using a VM running Debian.
>
> A bit of research indicates that the two most popular free VM 
> contenders are VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V.  Can anyone recommend 
> one over the other?  Are there better choices?
>
> As per laptop specs, I am figuring on getting something with a late 
> model Intel i7, 32 GB RAM, and 1-2TB storage. I figure many laptops 
> must meet this spec.  Is there anything else I should be looking for?
>
For VM engines there is VirtualBox which works fairly well.

There is also the possibility of dual boot because if you don't run both 
windows and linux  at the same time you can have more memory for each OS.

Having an SSD makes a huge performance improvement in a laptop over a 
spinning disk.

-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (905)513-7688
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