Agreed, I wouldnt run linux in a VM if it was my primary OS. Sorry to jump down your throat in my previous post.

 

I thought he wanted to try linux out for use as his day to day machine. A VM would give him a proper representation of what its like to use linux day to day without needing to do too much reorganization of his machine if he wanted to just get his feet wet.

 

I didnt get the impression he said he wanted to run linux just for xplane. If he did then yes, he would want all his cpu cycles. To see if it's good for day to day use then a VM would suit him fine and he could just continue to use XPX in windows until he knew he wanted to switch.

Nowadays Linux is pretty easy. Get Ubuntu, wich installs all necessary (need to update Nvidia?) drivers. I boot ALL main OS with Grub from several partitions. I've around 6 OS and after udpating an OS all I do is: sudo update-grub.

It's also faster by around 5% to Win8 out of the box (Nvidia) without knowing of:

http://www.phoronix...._desktops&num=1

With above you might get up to 10% speed increase to the latest Windows/drivers.

 

I started using it after a virus destroyed all my data back on Windows 98 and had not even one alike problem since. In fact I only boot other os for recompiling stuff and of general interest.

A VM would give him a proper representation of what its like to use linux day to day without needing to do too much reorganization of his machine if he wanted to just get his feet wet.

 

Alternatively, he can us a live CD or install Linux to a USB stick.

Long time Linux user here. Thought I'd chime in with my $0.02. I use Linux on my desktop and laptop daily. I use Windows 7 for flight simming and Civ 4 and other video games. I use Linux Mint with the MATE desktop - looks and works awesome. You can "burn" a linux .iso to a USB flash drive and boot off it - much better than using a live CD which can be slow (since, naturally, the "hard drive" is actually your CD-ROM). I suggest making a live USB flash install and use it - play with it for a few weeks, not just 10 minutes. If you like it, you can easily install it next to Windows and dual boot - which is what I do. I use linux all the time and Windows when I want to play a game. As for X-Plane on linux, I've tried it, it works nice. However, as others have mentioned, some of my add-ons don't work in X-Plane for Linux, so I stay with X-Plane on WIndows 7.

 

With my laptop, running Linux Mint, I've installed dozens of free software to do the things I need to do. When I plugged into the work HP laserjet printer, Linux found the drivers and "it just worked". Scanner? Just worked. Network card? Just worked. That doesn't mean linux has no driver problems, just that in my example it "just works". I don't even download drivers, they just install and work. My laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad (known to have excellent linux hardware support).

 

Take my suggestion, try linux on a USB drive. It's much faster than a live CD, and it's absolutely not permanent. You can just remove the USB drive and you're back to booting Windows. No sweat. Try linux for a week - not 10 minutes. If after a week you cannot get it to do what you need it to do (graphic editing, email, web, printing, etc) then you're only out the hour it took to download the .iso.

Run it through a VM, dual boot will not work for you trust me, as a new user, often you will find yourself in need to perform some task, and failing due your lack of knowledge, then you will get back to your old OS and then back to the other one, to the point you will not longer want to reboot your machine

I'm Linux user since Red Hat 5 times (year 1998 or so) and I suffered it a lot then, until I was able to buy a 2nd machine.

Xtremme makes a good point. I can see that happening to some users. My point was that using a USB flash disk is much faster and a better overall experience. There are clearly pro's and con's to VM or dual boot. Luckily you have choices!

Agreed, complete newbies should first install it in Virtualbox etc. Play around, try different desktops and even distributions, test your hardware and after a while, when you feel like playing 3D games (steam, x-plane etc.), you install it aside Windows.

http://distrowatch.com/

With my laptop, running Linux Mint, I've installed dozens of free software to do the things I need to do. When I plugged into the work HP laserjet printer, Linux found the drivers and "it just worked". Scanner? Just worked. Network card? Just worked. That doesn't mean linux has no driver problems, just that in my example it "just works". I don't even download drivers, they just install and work. My laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad (known to have excellent linux hardware support).

 

I can agree with this. I remember the good ol' days when you had to sacrifice a goat and recite magical incantations to get your hardware working properly in Linux (printers, in particular, required some very dark arts). Now days most hardware works out of the box provided you stick with Linux-friendly brands like nVidia and Hewlett-Packard, and it's always best to do an internet search before buying anything, just to make sure.

 

On the topic of flight sim hardware, my CH Eclipse Yoke works beautifully with X-Plane in Linux.

Remember having to build a new kernal to add a sound card or ethernet card? Bad old days for sure

What do ya mean bad old days? Nothing I liked more was having to rebuild the kernal. Knowing it was compiling on two different threads and lots of stuff was happening whilst I played nethack in another virtual login. Oh those were the days

Yea remember having to look up my v- and hsync frequency from Windows 98 to configure my X on Suse 5.3....They even gave a warning alike: wrong settings can damage your monitor!

 

But luckily Linux has nicely evolved since, but yea was kind of fun at that time.

What do ya mean bad old days? Nothing I liked more was having to rebuild the kernal. Knowing it was compiling on two different threads and lots of stuff was happening whilst I played nethack in another virtual login. Oh those were the days

 

Ohhh, nethack... I don't know how many hours I've put into that game. It was freaking brilliant. Did you manage to finish it? I was never even close. Sure brings back memories...

 

Skickat från min GT-I9300 via Tapatalk 2

 

 

Hmm, I dont remember if I finished it or not but I do remember a couple others I used to play. Omega and moria were very similar.

 

Of course the first one I played on unix was caves just for a laugh as I had already done a lot of interactive fiction ala infocom etc.

 

I remember my first intro to linux wasn't hugely positive, there was a single disk floating around which had a unix but the login hadn't been implemented yet and there was limited stuff to be done on it. Pretty soon a distro came out, SLS linux and then slackware and I had linux around since. Blimmin heck, looking at wikipedia it says SLS came out 20 years ago!

 

Still it beat the heck out of minix which could hardly multitask but was about the only other unix variety easily available on the pc, besides coherent. I was an OS/2 guy mostly until then.

 

Back to hack, I had an account on a xenix machine around 1989/90 and spent a bit of time dialed in to that as well:)

darkstar login: _

haha! memories