[GTALUG] VM decisions for school laptop..

William Park opengeometry at yahoo.ca
Thu Apr 12 00:57:07 EDT 2018


On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 08:05:19PM -0400, 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.

I'm not too keen on recommending VM route.  If you have the budget, get
2 identical laptops.  If Linux doesn't work out, it can serve as
"backup" Windows machine.

> 
> 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?

By now, you know 3rd contenders, VirtualBox. :-)  But, since Hyper-V is
part of Windows10, just use that.

> 
> 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?
-- 
William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>


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