Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
You're not seriously going to tell me that you're going to install Linux onto a computer, only to have it run VirtualBox with Windows XP inside it, using the virtual machine as your main operating system?
|
It is a great system. You have to take into account that Mint Linux is quite capable to cover the vast majority of your connection to the outside world. And you can run your paid-for old software in a virtual machine indefinitely. If you severely limit the connections to/from the inside of virtual machine you can skip patches and antivirus. That alone will make up for having to run in VM. You also have to take into account that modern processors have virtualization support, so virtual machines are surprisingly fast nowadays. Windows 2000 with MSWord 2000 in a Virtual Box from Oracle (hosted on Mint Linux) can start faster than a startup time of MSWord 2007 on the same-spec machine with XP or Vista.
Running legacy stuff inside VM in an old version of OS doesn't have to mean you are locked inside with an old Netscape browser.
Friend of mine runs FreeBSD with a spartan Window Manager as the main OS and runs all the work-related stuff in virtual machines. Works like a charm, even on a relatively old hardware. It is even good enough to install the newest Visual Studio for development of software.
Something similar is also done on a much larger scale on corporate level on "big" servers. They run virtual machines on bare-bone machines.
I was seriously considering similar setup when I purchased this i7 half a year ago. I settled for a Mint Linux, because it is still too much hassle to run virtual machine on a bare-bone hardware if you do not have access to a corporate-level resources. And Mint Linux covers the vast majority of my needs.