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

  • @[email protected]English
    8•1 year ago

    Is this a good idea?

    Sure!

    any preferred VM manager

    I like Virtualbox.

    • Do different distributions work better or worse?

    Depending on your specs, you may want to go lighter than you would on bare metal. For example, if you have 16 GB of RAM, you might want to only give your VM 4 GB of RAM so Windows can run on 12 GB, and then pick a lighter distro so it won’t be slow on 4 GB.

    Any major differences?

    Snapshots are way easier in a VM.

    Advantage/disadvantage

    Windows VM on linux is painfully slow and doesn’t have a license, so it’s much less good than linux VM on Windows IMO.

    Would it be possible to swap?

    Not as far as I’m aware, but smarter people than me have probably done it.

    • setVeryLoud(true);
      9•1 year ago

      You can license Windows in a VM, you can grab your Windows license from the UEFI system using a command:

      sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM

    • arglebargleEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      Windows vm on a Linux box is not painfully slow. It’s about the same as native, where did you get this idea?

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      Depending on your specs, you may want to go lighter (…)

      Good point regarding balancing hardware resources.

      Windows VM on linux is painfully slow and doesn’t have a license, so it’s much less good than linux VM on Windows IMO.

      Good to know.

      Thanks!