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

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