to dual boot or not to dual boot

[L33F3R]

Here's a serious business question that has stood the test of time. Do I dual boot or single boot?

I have attempted to move this discussion from the porting projects area. That said, I am no mod so heres a silly attempt . I figured it would best fit into desktop linux because I dont know of any dual boot server....

Deanjo:

Basically hes saying that its not as bad as you think, both OS's can do most things the same so the need to reboot a lot doesn't exist. Hes saying to stay in windows because most tasks you do under linux can be done in windows.

Apopas:

Hes saying its impractical to dual boot. He says this several times.

Dragonlord:

He made some random point about running Linux on windows with a VM. I dont think anyone objects with him that running linux ontop of windows constitutes idiocy.

(sorry if i misinterpreted any of you)
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So hows this click because im torn between single boot and multi boot. On 1 hand I like to game but on the other I dont like my platform to crash after a week.

And when you multiboot with linux/windows whats the OS of choice? Because the only released versions of windows you can use are Vista and XP, both of which cant utilize my 6gb memory in 32 bit mode. Windows XP 64-bit is not supported anymore, and wasn't supported when it came out as far as im concerned.

Is it a waste of time to reboot every time you wish to use the other operating system? I myself find it to be a pain.

Does it undermine Linux game development when we dual boot?

Is a virtual machine a valid option?

Boxers or briefs?

[Odin]

I have installed a dual boot system on my notebook and another one on my desktop pc.

Most time I am using Vista (Business, 64bit) on my desktop computer due to games and MS Office (Visio!). I just boot with Ubuntu 9.04 when I want to do programming stuff.

On my notebook Ubuntu 8.10 is the prefered operating system and I just use Windows 7 for MS Office (Visio!)

[Caprica]

I used to dual-boot windows xp and a linux distro (varied naturally) and had no issues with rebooting when I was wanting to play a game.

With linux being my OS for everything else. Eventually I noticed that I hadnt booted XP for a couple of months so I decided to wipe it, and havnt regretted it.

The odd game I play is older, and normally runs well in wine. And there seems to be a fair increase in linux native games now.

Theres a couple of guys at uni, who run linux in vbox inside of windows, its not perfect but no solution really is atm. Another runs cygwin in windows 7 and apart from the odd problem its seems to run smoothly enough.

Im guessing the post wont be all that helpful as its your computing time/experiece/whatever and the best option is what works best for you

[Yomp!!]

I have tried dual booting a few times, it wasn't for me, but the reasoning for it at the time was because I wanted to play some commercial games on Windows (Such as Team Fortress 2), and use Linux for everything else (Desktop use, movies, and native games. I hate Wine for modern games).

However over time I was starting to grow tired of the commercial games I was playing, and I hated dual booting on the side (just a personal beef, its actually a good solution), so I just went pure Linux and thats where I stand today.

As far as what I think the best solution is, if you play fairly new or very new commercial DirectX games, dual-booting is pretty much your only option, or running Linux in a VM. Personally I prefer the dual boot method because theres a fairly big speed loss in a VM and if you use Linux often, there is no other way than to run it natively. Of course that is my opinion.

Theres really no wrong way to do it. All I'm going to say is, Wine is not the solution, no way. Maybe for some older stuff, I do play a couple of pretty old games with it occasionally, some struggle with Vista (not with XP though) but run fine with Wine. Of course you already knew that.

Edit:

I also wanted to add one last thing, dual booting does NOT undermine Linux on the gaming side as long as you buy the Linux version of a game if there is one available.

[L33F3R]

thats kind of an iffy statement there at the end although i would tend to agree with you judging by the comments on the beta key giveaway.

[frantaylor]

If you have a SSD, it takes only a few seconds to boot.

If you use multiple drives and switch them in the BIOS, you don't have to worry about sharing drives.

You really want an OS to have its own disk. If you share two OS's on one disk, one of them will end up on the inner tracks and will run much more slowly.

Instead of switching in the BIOS, you can put each OS on its own drive and use GRUB to choose. If you are very clever, you can add a small script to each OS that modifies the default GRUB setting, so you can make a "shutdown and reboot as the other OS" button if you want.

Just throwing out some ideas that I've tried here...

[Exopaladin]

I still dual boot but haven't booted Windows in months. Most of the games I play tend to work well enough in wine that I'm not motivated enough to boot XP for the sake of better performance.

My XP install is a 64bit one, seems supported well enough to me. Although that quite possibly wouldn't be the case if I used anything USB beyond a keyboard and mouse.

[Yomp!!]

thats kind of an iffy statement there at the end although i would tend to agree with you judging by the comments on the beta key giveaway.

I know what you mean, more Linux gamers means more games. However the problem kind of goes in a circle, to prove theres as many Linux gamers as there are, there needs to be results. But to get results we need native games that can generate results, meaning games alot of people actually want to play (and pay for).

And yeah, theres alot of comments in the HoN beta key giveaway. My biggest question is, how many of them are actually Linux gamers? And how many of them are just Windows gamers that heard about it one way or another and are just coming here to get a key? I'd say probably like 60-70% of them are Linux gamers and the rest are windows users, but thats just an assumption.

I'm willing to bet though that the HoN sales when the game releases won't show these results we're seeing right now as much as I hate to say it.

If you have a SSD, it takes only a few seconds to boot.

If you use multiple drives and switch them in the BIOS, you don't have to worry about sharing drives.

You really want an OS to have its own disk. If you share two OS's on one disk, one of them will end up on the inner tracks and will run much more slowly.

Instead of switching in the BIOS, you can put each OS on its own drive and use GRUB to choose. If you are very clever, you can add a small script to each OS that modifies the default GRUB setting, so you can make a "shutdown and reboot as the other OS" button if you want.

Just throwing out some ideas that I've tried here...

Thats actually a very good point. My biggest headache with dual booting was sharing space off of one drive, I don't have another hard drive though so I never bothered with that. Well, I do have another hard drive but its a 6 year old 120GB IDE Western Digital drive that is making a loud whining sound nowdays. I refuse to have it in my case hehe, I need to buy another drive or two, mainly for backup purposes but I'll keep your point in mind as well.

Separate drives for dual booting definitely makes dual booting more attractive for those that need it.

[L33F3R]

few days ago i was going to post a rant about the state of linux gaming in correlation with the keys. It got so ridiculously long and confusing i decided not to post it. perhaps i should?