endperform.org

I’ve come to a decision about Linux / Windows on my desktop and laptop. For the foreseeable future, I intend to run Windows as the host OS, and run Linux as a guest. Before you hardcore Linux guys (yes, I was one of those guys) accuse me of selling out, hear me out on this. Recently I’ve been finding myself spending a lot of time on the Windows side of my desktop. I’ve been doing a lot of gaming, and recently with my photography beginning to pick up I’m finding that the tools I need are on the Windows side. iTunes is another reason. There’s no way to sync my iPhone on Linux, and by sync I mean everything: apps, contacts, music and pictures. Sure, there might be a hack for the music portion, but I need everything.

This doesn’t mean I’m done in the Linux community, or that I don’t like Linux any more. I’m just going to start using the best tools for the job, and of late at home it’s a combination of native Windows, virtual Linux. Who knows, I might end up changing my mind again next week, but time will tell.

I’ve decided to go the Linux in a VM route on my laptop. Yes, I know, bad geek, but I’m willing to take the loss of geek points. My main reasons for switching to this setup is battery life and heat. I know I could spend hours trying to get things tweaked just right, but even so it seems that Vista does a bit of a better job as far as these two categories go. My laptop has enough power that running a VM isn’t going to be a big deal, especially when I can just SSH into my desktop and access just about everything there.

This also means I may post some Windows tips/tricks since I’m going to try to keep this thing running in top shape. I may also review some utilities I’m using as well. While I do prefer Linux, I’m also a fan of using what gets the job done.

Lately, I’ve kept the laptop booting into Vista and doing what I need to do there. Why? Well, with the way the laptop is hooked up, opening the lid fully to see is something of a challenge. The problem with Ubuntu (most likely X/Nvidia) is that it defaults to the laptop display and does not output to the external monitor. Once I get booted into Ubuntu, I can use the Nvidia settings utility to set the display, but the issue is that the utility doesn’t save the settings. I have to reset it every time I boot. Now, I’d go through the trouble of setting the Xorg configuration up, but in a week or two the laptop will be back to mobile-only status. I just figured I’d vent a little bit about it here.

Since I’m on the subject of Vista, I’ve been going through a couple of sites trying to get the best performance I can. Right now, it’s not too bad. Sometimes I forget that Windows isn’t all bad, really, but I do prefer Linux. Aero is a decent interface, and seems pretty snappy on the laptop. I turned off indexing, which helps with disk thrashing. I’ve also got Firefox 3 running here, and it works well. There’s a part of me that is pondering setting up Ubuntu in Virtualbox under Vista on the desktop. I’ll have to give it a test and see how it works. If it performs well enough I’ll keep it, otherwise I’ll go through and repartition.