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Linux Development on Vista

by Chris Wiegman on September 14th, 2008

I’ve been using Linux off-and-on for about the last 10 years. At times it has even been my only operating system on whatever computer I was using. The thing was I wouldn’t dual-boot and none of the virtual machines I tried could really keep up with what I was doing.

As for the dual boot, it just never seemed worth it to waste so much of my hard-drive space so I could waste more time switching between operating systems whenever I needed something on the other one. As for the virtual machines, although they would load a guest OS, they tended to make one system or the other almost unusable in that switching between the two was often less than a pleasant experience. Heck, I don’t know how many times I’ve killed either the guest or the host when the VM did something it shouldn’t.

Finally, as of last week, I think I’ve found a VM I really like. Actually, it’s a VM I’ve used for some time, but until it’s latest update I found it less than an enjoyable experience. This new [updated] VM is VirtualBox by Sun. In the 2.0 release last week it is more stable, and seems to be much more efficient in how it handles the resources on the host system. Finally I can run Ubuntu for various tasks on my primary machine without having to worry about how long I have until the next crash!




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2 Comments
  1. Might I be the first to suggest you’re doing it backwards? Linux should be your host if you’re looking for stability. Vista, or better yet XP, could be your guest OS in VirtualBox. I’m loving Ubuntu.

  2. Haha. I’ve thought that myself, but my primary job function requires support of an App that will only run on IE in Windows and unfortunately I’m not allowed to change that. I am looking to buy a Mac next month though for my personal machine as anything POSIX would be better than Vista.

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