On Wed, 2018-04-11 at 20:05 -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.
My kids run Linux at home and Windows at school. My first will be headed off to University this fall as well. I asked and the school does support using Linux so she will likely choose that as her main OS.
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.
If the courses require Windows it is likely best to run Windows. Though the technically adept can run Linux with a VM machine with Windows. (Assuming they do not need direct hardware access for gaming). Linux as a host OS takes up less memory than Windows as a host OS so that is the route I chose.
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?
VirtualBox is another solid choice.
As per laptop specs, I am figuring on getting something with a late model Intel i7, 32 GB RAM, and 1-2TB storage. I figure many laptops must meet this spec. Is there anything else I should be looking for?
That sounds like a heavy brick of a machine. To be honest 32GB of ram is overkill in most cases. I might consider getting a USB attached HD for long term storage and a 512GB SSD for the laptop. That would be a good mix of performance with the ability to save files for long term use.