Trying to DUMP Windows.... But

[Chris Jones]

Hi,

> Points well taken but, my understanding is that virtualizing via kvm
> (Kernel Virtual Mode), particularly if you have the virtualization
> extensions implemented in your CPU and your motherboard supports it, and
> many do these days, has a negligible and imperceptible hit on
> performance. I have run Windows in such an environment but I had no
> motivation to run benchmarks because the performance was so good that I
> didn't care if I might "only" have 95% of the performance of running on
> bare metal.

This is true, but not really what I was referring to.

> 
> Generally speaking, those who virtualize aren't gamers and graphics
> performance, especially on modern hardware, is perfectly acceptable in
> virtual machines. When I run Windows virtualized, it's only because I
> want to treat it like a brain in a jar like in one of those shlocky
> sci-fi flicks. I don't care about connecting peripherals via USB or
> squeezing the last few frames per second of graphics performance. In
> fact, if I cared about the latter, I wouldn't run the pedestrian video
> cards I run.

On the USB point. I think this is important. Many people these days have 
large collections of movies/photos/music which are commonly stored on 
external drives. In this case someone considering switching is going to 
expect to be able to access these external drives just as easily under 
linux as windows. In a native install, this will likely work well. In a 
VM, my experience is it is sometimes a little flaky. So, if this was 
important to the potential switcher, as the OP in this case, I wouldn't 
suggest trying things out in a VM.

On the graphics front it is true it just just eye candy, and not 
critical, but again I think it best to present linux in its best light, 
and with the modern composting window managers (KDE4, compiz etc.) this 
requires good opengl hardware acceleration, which afaik no VM solution 
yet gives (easily...).

Chris