Outline · [ Standard ] · Linear+ Operating system help required

[miskie]

My Ubuntu experiences have been somewhat better than yours. 

Mrs Bloodaxe assures me that if I must play games on it she can install WinBox or something that will enable the computer to pretend to be a Windows machine. It all sounds like a bit much faf to me and the loss in performance must be pretty steep. If the laptop had been able to run the Vista it came with it would have been able to happily run Stalker. With this solution I'd be surprised if it could run Half-Life at 60fps.

Is the Laptop a muilticore unit ? If it is, then virtualization may be the way to go - Giving an entire CPU core over to the target machine results in a near 1:1 emulation speed, making running Windows apps in a Linux virtual environment as easy as running them natively.

I'm going to experiment a bit and report back with my findings later.

[DoktorSeven]

By the way the XFi sound drivers are in the latest versions of the Linux kernel, so you can't complain anymore

[miskie]

What Ive done so far --

I have followed this guide (for the most part) to add VirtualBox to Ubuntu - the only real difference is I needed to go to the VirtualBox site and download the latest Ubuntu packages. I then installed TinyXP to the fake system, and gave it one CPU to adore and love.

The end sum is I now can open WinXP windows and devices on top of Linux almost as if they were native - As a matter of fact, I am typing this message on Internet Explorer running in a window on top of the Linux Desktop, and Windows doesnt seem to know the difference. I will report back after I run Windows update and pick up a few things like a newer flash, DirectX and whatnot. I will say thogh that the response I have right now is good enough for running productivity software. Ill see what happens with games later.

[DoktorSeven]

Running Windows in VBox is a beautiful thing if you just need Windows apps and maybe VERY simple games and such to run. It all runs seamlessly in its own window or as single app windows on the Linux desktop, as Miskie said. It's all very beautiful in its own way.

And by the way, the opposite is true as well -- if you're not familiar with Linux, grab Virtualbox (for windows), a Linux CD image, install it and give it a whirl. You might be impressed.

Might.

[miskie]

Well, my tests have confirmed, virtualizing for the sake of games isn't the way to proceed - Might I suggest splitting the difference with the missus and dual booing the lappy ? 80 gigs for each of you should be more than enough (hell, 80 gigs in a Linux environment may as well be infinite)

Repartition the drive - Install windows to one partition, give Ubuntu the other and not only will it manage itself properly, it will recognize the Windows install and leave it as a boot option. Also Linux will be able to read and write files to the Windows Partition fairly easily which can be quite helpful.

[DoktorSeven]

Right, VirtualBox can't do very advanced games at all. There is a 3d option you can check to get OpenGL games running semi-decently (in Windows under Linux; Windows on Windows can get both), and I've seen some hacks where you can get DX games running as well, but you're still going to be limited in what you can run.

You do still have Wine, though, which can run several games quite well given a little configuration.

[Brian Bloodaxe]

The Bloodaxe household are still playing with operating systems... We now have tiny XP installed via virtual box on our Mac and we are wondering how much of our four gigs of RAM to allocate to it when it is running. I figure 1gig should be enough as it wont be running games but I thought I'd get your recommendations before setting it and forgetting how to change it.