On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 12:57 AM, William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 08:05:19PM -0400, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> My son is off to university for CS this fall, and will need a laptop. I'm
> looking at purchasing one for him, so he can run Windows and Linux. I'm
> figuring on going the VM route.

I'm not too keen on recommending VM route.

Why not? Unless you have really underpowered machines, it's a perfectly viable way to run multiple operating systems simultaneously.

If you have the budget, get
2 identical laptops. If Linux doesn't work out, it can serve as
"backup" Windows machine.

That seems rather impractical. Would you carry two laptops "just in case"?

> He can use both OS's but is probably more familiar with Win, and his courses
> mandate a number of windows only tools. I'm heading in the direction of
> booting Win10 and using a VM running Debian.
>
> A bit of research indicates that the two most popular free VM contenders are
> VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V. Can anyone recommend one over the other?
> Are there better choices?

By now, you know 3rd contenders, VirtualBox. :-) But, since Hyper-V is
part of Windows10, just use that.

The version of Windows 10 matters. Windows 10 Home does not have Hyper-V. You must be using Windows Professional or better for it to support Hyper-V.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay

+1 647-778-8696