Thanks. How about using Cygwin for the transition? I have that already and use it a lot. John On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 01:22:10AM -0800, marbux wrote: > On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:28 AM, John J. Boyer > <john.boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > A very interesting discussion. Everyone recommends a virtual machine. > > What is the problem with dual-boot? That would be the most stable > > configuration. > > Dual-boot is a maddening configuration because of a permutation of > Murphy's Law: What you want to do next seemingly always requires > rebooting the system to access the other OS. So with an inspiration > for something to do on the other system, you sit there and wait, over > and over again. > > The huge advantage of VMs is that there is no need to reboot; you have > instant access to both systems with a keyboard shortcut and can do > things like sharing the clipboard, devices, etc., because of > "pass-through" code. E.g., if I'm in Windows and see some content I > want to use on Linux I can just clip it in Windows, hit a shortcut, > and paste it to an app on Mint. And vice versa. Or I can save it to a > shared partition and open the file on the other system. Shared disk > drives, shared printers, shared USB devices, on and on, all just a > keyboard shortcut away. You can even have each system performing tasks > concurrently and VM software is not limited to running a single VM at > once. > > VM's aren't inherently unstable but they can't be any more stable than > the host operating system. Windows instability has been the focus of > our discussion, not the stability of VMs themselves. > > The major vulnerability of VMs, in my view, is that they require a > virtual hard drive, which in reality exists as one huge file on the > host machine. If the host operating system is prone to corrupting > files, the VM is in danger. Hence our discussion of which OS should be > running on bare metal and which should be running on the VM. > > Best regards, > > Paul > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list -- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list