New
#60
Hi there
an even BETTER solution is to use GRUB on the external USB drive and then mount and boot a Windows VHD (note NOT a Virtual machine) and boot from it. then you can run a Full PORTABLE NATIVE windows OS from your USB device. You can also boot any Linux distro you want.
Seems to me a bit pointless to run Windows as a VM from Linux if most of the time you are using Windows applications such as Photoshop, Office etc.
Don't get me wrong -- I LIKE Linux - but for me I only use it as a file and internet Database server.
For what I need and do Linux as a DESKTOP OS doesn't cut it for me -- but absolutely NO problems as a Server.
BTW another interesting idea is to try running ESXi (free version) from VMware -- it's a TINY Hypervisor -- and then run a Windows VM from the USB device. The disadvantage is that you would need a separate client machine to access the VM but the overhead of the hypervisor is so tiny that the VM runs at 99.9% native speed and you can use some real hardware too (Esxi allows things like Pci passthru to access real hardware). However setting this up is quite tricky so it's not for beginners. If you don't have a spare client machine then this isn't an option -- I mention this because if you DO have a spare machine it's quite a fun exercise to have a go with it. Installing Esxi takes around 2 mins !! it's such a small kernel -- but be warned some of its hardware requirements are quite picky.
Virtualising the Esxi itself could also be an interesting idea -- the overhead of a second level of virtualisation (a Windows VM under a Virtual esxi) might be LESS than running a windows VM under a full Linux distro - and in this case you wouldn't need a separate physical client machine --you could access the Windows VM from the Host machine.
Cheers
jimbo