Hi, I’m an old windows user who have played with linux* a few times, but never commited to it.

I want to dive deeper and I though about installing linux in a VM. Some basic questions:

  • Is that a good idea? / Anything I should take into account?
  • Is there any preferred VM manager for this? Windows comes with Hyper-V, but I remember reading about how Hyper-V is not ideal (I could be wrong).
  • Do different distributions work better or worse on VMs?
  • Are there any major differences when using linux in a VM compared to a bare metal installation?

And some not-so-basic ones:

  • Is there any [dis]advantage to “Linux VM on Windows” VS “Windows VM on Linux”?
  • If I start with “Linux VM on Windows”, would it be possible to swap them in the future? What I mean is:
    • Virtualize the Windows installation so it can be run as a VM.
    • Un-virtualize the Linux VM (with all its contents and configuration) and move it to bare metal.
    • Run Windows VM on linux.

Notes:

  • I did a quick search and, although I found multiple articles about the topic, the ones I’ve read just show one way to do it without comparing it to the alternatives.
  • I’m aware of WSL(2), but I would like to be able to decouple from Windows in the future.
  • EIDT: I tried dual booting in the past. The main problem is that I’m too lazy to reboot every time I want to try something in linux and I end up not using it.

Thanks!

* Mandatory linux = GNU/Linux

  • Crul@lemm.eeOP
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    1 year ago

    Thanks for the answer!

    May I ask you how do you balance resources (mainly RAM) between Windows and Linux?

    • GoumLeChat
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      1 year ago

      Well that’s my main issue, my rig runs an i5-6900 and I have 16GB RAM. I gave 6 to the Linux VM, and try to maintain the usage on Windows as low as possible : not having the browser running on both, a plug-in to put to sleep tabs not used, stopping processes I’m not using. KDE is a bit too much in my case, but Cinnamon, or XFCE are working fine. I’ve found a new love with i3wm but it needs some time to tinker it to your taste.

      But if you have a more recent computer, you should be fine. Upgrade the RAM maybe, if you find it to slow.