[GTALUG] VM decisions for school laptop..

[Clifford Ilkay]

Windows 10 has something called the Linux subsystem for Windows. It was
originally Ubuntu only. Now it supports Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and maybe
others, too. I've used the Ubuntu version when it first came out. It makes
Windows 10 tolerable as a developer workstation.

If you insist that he must use virtualization, Hyper-V is the natural
choice since it comes with Windows Professional and up. That, like VMware
ESXi, Xen, and Linux KVM are all Type 1 hypervisors, i.e., they run on bare
metal and as such, tend to have better I/O performance. VirtualBox and
VMware Workstation are Type 2 hypervisors. They run on a host operating
system. VirtualBox is fine as long as you're not expecting great disk I/O
performance.

All these options work well enough. Picking one does not preclude you from
using the others. You should be aware that the CPU and the BIOS must
support Intel's VT-x to run Hyper-V. You can run VirtualBox without it but
you'll be limited to 32 bit operating systems.

The only notebooks that I have encountered with 32GB of RAM are expensive,
large, and heavy. I have an older Dell Precision M4700 mobile workstation.
It has 32GB of RAM and it's a plenty fast but the even the brick weighs
more than my 13" MacBook Pro.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay

+1 647-778-8696

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 8:05 PM, Michael Galea via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
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?
>
> --
> Michael Galea
> ---
> Talk Mailing List
> talk at gtalug.org
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
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