Which way is the best choice to co-exist Windows and Linux ?

If you want to run a Linux-like environment within a basic windows host, good choices are:

mingw/msys (fast, "native" windows versions of common *nix tools, but lacks full posix support and more advanced *nix tools)

cygwin (fairly complete posix support and *nix development environment, but feels a little alien within windows and has cygwin1.dll hell)

VirtualBox (free virtual machine manager - runs windows and Linux guests on windows and Linux hosts. The full version supports USB)

I wouldn't bother with coLinux - it has somewhat lost its point after tools like VirtualBox matured.

VMWare works okay, but it's expensive for the full desktop version - VirtualBox does pretty much the same thing for free.

As for Microsoft VPC, I don't know. Windows 2K and XP are okay as desktop systems, but I can't think of any other Microsoft software that holds any appeal.

Dual booting works fine if you can separate your Linux and your windows work - frequently, that's quite difficult.

I use mingw/msys where I can, cygwin where I have to. For work that is more natural under Linux, I use kubuntu under VirtualBox. For some testing work, I also use virtual windows boxes. You can also use a Linux host and run windows programs in a VirtualBox machine.

Make sure you've got plenty of ram for your virtual machines, and get an extra network card. If you set that up as a bridge in your host, you can bridge your guests' virtual network cards to the second network card and thus let them have direct access to the network.

There are a lot more virtualization platforms now. E.g. VBox (That is the one I use), XEN (supported by Novell, running on Linux you can install Windows as a guest) Parallel, ....

Cygwin is exceptionally slow and often causes problems, but of course it's the tightest possible integration if you only need Linux command line tools.

-Michael

"Kid" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@c19g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

I use Linux hosts with the free VMware Server to virtualize a few Windows and Linux versions. Linux gives me a much better performance than using Windows as a host.

Just make sure you have plenty of memory to keep the most important virtual machines from swapping. Also use multi-core processors and assign only one CPU for a virtual machine.

I use quad-core 2.4GHz machines with Linux and VMware Server to virtualize a Windows 2003 Terminal Server for 10 users, a Windows 2003 Small Business Server with Exchange and a Linux web server. Occasionally a few test virtual machines are also running with Linux, Windows 98, 2000, XP and Vista to test software. It works like a charm (after tuning the host and VMware for optimum IO performance).

Frank