I run a Windows 8.1 machine in virtual environment to perform certain tasks that couldn’t be done under Linux - although I rarely use that machine. That way, even if it is compromised, it will not damage my entire system or data and will only affect the limited set of files it was accessing. I am much more comfortable keeping Windows in a contained virtual environment. Looking at the vulnerabilities found in Microsoft Windows, I would be extremely careful with it running on my main system. Instead of going through the complexity and pain of dual booting, you can easily use virtual machine to run Windows software. In many countries, software needed for tax filing and other government related work is supported only on Windows. Many Linux users have to dual boot because they need certain proprietary software or services that are not yet available for Linux. Virtual machines are used heavily in the enterprise segment, but in this article I am going to talk about advantages of virtual machines for new Linux users and how they can benefit from them. Of late, I have become a heavy user of virtual machines, which allows me to safely play with multiple distros on the same machine and write about them. Hardware support has become less and less important and the focus has shifted to the unique features of distros. Thanks to work done by kernel developers like Greg Kroah-Hartman, most hardware works out of the box on Linux. I needed to know how well it worked with “real” metal. As a Linux journalist, I could not rely on a virtual machine to review a distro and recommend it. A Linux user needed to interact with “real” hardware to find solution a virtual machine was out of question. Every time you came across a new device, you had to find drivers and wrappers to make things work. As a Linux advocate who would take pains to convert users to Linux, virtual machines served no purpose for me.īack in 2005, the greatest challenge for Linux was hardware: wireless wouldn’t work Bluetooth might not work, graphics would give glitches and even USB devices like tablet pens refused to talk. I must admit I haven’t been a huge fan of virtual machines for personal use until recently.

How to use virtualbox on mac linux