[ale] Best way to use both Windows and Linux?

[Scott Plante]

Three other options that come to mind: 
4) Have a separate Linux & Windows box, and use Synergy to share a keyboard and mouse. 
5) Install Linux only and use Wine or Crossover to run any Windows applications you need. 
6) Install Linux only and use Citrix XenApp (or remote desktop, VNC, etc.) to run the occasional Windows app. 


I don't think there is necessarily a "best" way because it depends on your particular budget and needs. I use option 4 and find it very handy. All my work is done on the Linux box and the Windows box primarily displays documentation and the occasional required Win app. I've been running this way for years and it's worked out well for me, but lately the required Win apps are becoming rarer and rarer. We have a Xen server with various flavors of Windows I can also spin up as needed to test installs or some issue that might be related to the particular platform. We have a customer who has a surprising percentage of Macs now, and they use XenApp for everything that's not web based--and most of their internal apps are now cross-platform web apps now. That used to be the big hurdle for corp environments--some internal app developed in Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, or some such that only ran on Windows, and was necessary for everyone to use. The customer using XenApp actually uses it for their workers on Windows boxes too--that way those boxes can be low-powered and identically configured. The email and internal apps are web based and nothing particular to the worker is loaded or stored on the PC in most cases. It's essentially a terminal. 


Scott 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Paul Storey" <paul0123 at comcast.net> 
To: ale at ale.org 
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2014 12:40:48 PM 
Subject: [ale] Best way to use both Windows and Linux? 

ALE List, 

For people here who use both Windows and Linux, how do you manage it? 

1) Have separate Windows and Linux partitions available for dual boot, 
2) Install Windows as a hypervisor and run Linux in a VM, or 
3) Install Linux as a hypervisor and run Windows in a VM ? 

Each method seems to have it's pros and cons. I'm curious what others 
are doing. 

Thank you, 
Paul Storey 

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