[conspire] VirtualBox

[Paul Zander]

First I thank everyone for the assortment of ideas.

Yes, Apr 15 is coming soon.  For personal reasons, I prefer to keep my tax data on my computer.  Also I have a preference for the HR Block software.  That goes back some years when the other popular software tightened their licensing policy.  


In addition to tax software, there are other applications I want installed on my version of Windows.  If I was doing a lot of web-site development, I can see the utility of having a variety of "standard" OS's available for testing.

To summarize several comments, (I hope I got this right):
* It is preferable to have Linux as the native OS and run Windows as guest. 


* Not getting install media with a computer makes this difficult.  From the point of view of the profit motivated computer supplier, this sort of makes sense.  90% of the disks will never be used.  When I wanted to replace XP, I bought a disk online. It was labeled, "Only for installation on brand-D computer."

* Just making a back-up copy of Windows can be problematic. From what I have read, the default back-up/restore only works on the standard Microsoft supplied software. Other software is needed to capture all of the other applications.  Some years ago, I diligently followed the instructions that came with the computer to bake a restore copy of XP.  When I tried to use it, it didn't even work. It might have been simply that I had re-partitioned the hard drive.  Fortunately the maker of the computer had put the software license numbers on a sticker on the case.

* Of the suggestions offered, I am inclined to follow the advise to get the Win 10 update. 

________________________________
From: Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>
To: Tony Godshall <apgodshall at gmail.com> 
Cc: conspire <conspire at linuxmafia.com>
Sent: Monday, March 7, 2016 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: [conspire] VirtualBox


begin Tony Godshall quotation of Mon, Mar 07, 2016 at 06:46:53AM -0800:

> And how much is a retail copy of Windows? This year I'm doing my taxes
> online at turbotax.com. it gives you a warning about Linux maybe not
> rendering right but it's worked great. And I can proceed even on a Android
> tablet entering documents as I find them. Installing Windows software is so
> over.

Over for day-to-day use for most people, but there are
still some situations where it comes up for me.

* Some people still have to do QA for web sites
   and use one or more browsers under a Microsoft OS.

* Much online meeting software is problematic
   on Linux.  And it requires so many dependencies
   of uncertain provenance that you might as well
   run it in a VM.

The good news is that MSFT has realized that many
web developers find it hard to get to an MS-Windows
machine for testing.  So, free Microsoft VM images are
available.

  https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/linux/

These should work as-is on Virtualbox, or if you want
to run one under QEMU/KVM/virt-manager I have some
notes here:

  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/tips/MSIE-on-Linux/

Whatever tool you are using to manage VMs should let
you take a snapshot so you can start with a clean VM
each time.

Questions and suggestions welcome. 

-- 
Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>                  
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
Are you safe from 3rd-party web tracking?  http://www.aloodo.org/test/


_______________________________________________
conspire mailing list
conspire at linuxmafia.com
http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire