[conspire] (forw) [sf-lug] Dual boot (was: pair of own suggestion)

[Leo]

I used to dual-boot.  And then I found a better solution - multiple OS
drives.

But why dual-boot?  For me, video gaming is the main reason.  Modern games
use all the hardware resources available and so virtual machines or other
kinds of emulation are less than ideal.  For the same reason, I use the
proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers as repackaged and provided for Fedora
by RPM Forge.  The difference in performance compared to the open source
drivers is significant.

Dual-booting, when I did it, was fine 90% of the time.  But when the system
doesn't boot after a kernel update, you have the fun of learning all those
low level grub commands and how the devices on your system are addressed
from the BIOS.  After going through this a few times, I took a bunch of
notes that I could use whenever it became necessary for each of my
systems.  While people interested in system administration could get things
working again, this type of bootloader/MBR/GPT/grub repair might be
difficult for many linux end-users.

And then I found the solution that works best for me.  A six-button SATA
switch I got from Amazon for $25.  It fits in a CD drive slot in the front
of the computer case and it allows me to power individual drives up and
down at will.  When a drive is powered on, the computer sees it and when it
is powered off, the computer doesn't know that it's there.  Most of the
time, the linux SSD is powered on and booted from.  When I want to play
some games that don't work well on linux, I just power off the computer,
switch off the linux SSD, switch on the windows SSD, and hit the power
switch.  Each drive has only the bootloader installed by the operating
system that lives on it.

The SATA switch also allows me to save wear and tear on the non-system
spinning rust drives by keeping them powered off until/unless they are
actually needed.

Many higher-end gaming laptops have room for two NVME drives and in this
case I install linux on one drive and Windows on the other and use the BIOS
hotkey to select the boot device when powering on whenever I want to boot
the Windows drive.  This BIOS boot device selection method could also be
used on desktops in place of the SATA switch with the possible disadvantage
that most linux distributions will add a boot entry for any other bootable
drives it sees when updating the kernel or grub making the grub
configuration slightly more complicated.

Leo

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 2:21 AM Syeed Ali <syeedali at syeedali.com> wrote:

> "Windows Subsystem for Linux" = WSL
>
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/
>
>
> On Wed, 13 Oct 2021 15:13:20 -0700
> Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org> wrote:
>
> > And there are new options available. Recent releases of Microsoft
> > Windows have the somewhat confusingly-named "Windows Subsystem for
> > Linux" ...
>
> For those who don't know, the "XLaunch" component of "VcXsrv Windows X
> Server" allows one to run GUI apps.
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/
>
> > ... which gives users of those Windows systems access to a fairly
> > complete Linux install that has your existing files available.
>
> On that note.
>
>
> ----
>
>
> For everyone:  DO NOT USE WINDOWS TO MODIFY WSL CONTENT
>
> When running a WSL shell, you have files.  You can use explorer.exe to
> get to those files.  If you modify them from within that Windows host,
> it will work perfectly until it doesn't, and then you will be sad.  You
> might think modifying a text file is okay, but not only might it
> corrupt that text file it might do odd things across your entire
> in-Linux experience.
>
> IMO WSL is not a good idea in general.  For "trying" Linux?  I'm
> not convinced.. maybe at the shell level?
>
> I've had extensive experience with Babun, a bit of Cygwin, plenty of
> Windows Subsystem for Linux and lots of VirtualBox.  Of all those,
> VirtualBox is most recommended, though it may still require special
> advice for getting it working across multiple monitors.
>
> For "trying" Linux, Ventoy is the best.
>
> https://www.ventoy.net/
>
> It creates a USB stick which can have distribution ISOs copied to it
> unmodified.  They can be live ISOs and can be easily given persistency
> so they can be updated and used exactly the same as a dual-booted
> system but with none of the bootloader risks.  (Of course a user could
> still mount their Windows disks and stomp around, but they could do
> that from within Windows anyway so it's not an additional risk.)
>
> This does not address Rick Moen's first point:
>
> > 1.  Although the user assumed he/she would be switching OSes as
> > convenient through closing all applications and rebooting, over time
> > the user discovers it's so disruptive to workflow that he/she stays
> > 99%+ of the time in the more-familiar OS, and thus never really
> > learns Linux or gets benefit from its presence -- rendering the
> > entire exercise ultimately a waste of time.
>
> Can this be mapped over to the problem of natural language-learning and
> the benefits of "immersion"?
>
> Identify and 1:1 map all tasks over to the equivalent tools on Linux,
> then insist upon long periods of immersion.
>
> Technically speaking, a mentor could customize a system and build a
> persistence file for a mentee.
>
> Though the mentor-mentee relationship is so rare my spell checker
> doesn't think it's real.  :(
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> It's nice of Microsoft to EMBRACE Linux with WSL.  I'm sure that running
> Linux and Windows apps will be great, and that Microsoft will endeavor
> to EXTEND the functionality even further!  I wonder what Microsoft will
> do next!
>
> /snark
>
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>
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