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I'm learning ubuntu and my teacher is using vmware. I remember my friend partioning his laptop disc or something, when he booted up his laptop he had a choice to start with windows or ubuntu. How did he do that? also is this the better way than using virtualbox?

wjandrea
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user2998413
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2 Answers2

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It depends on what you want to do. Your teacher needs a Virtual device for teaching purposes s it makes no sense to have to install Ubuntu just to teach and that's another great use for Virtual devices.

So it depends on what your intentions are, you either install it alone or alongside Windows or use a Virtual device or machine to run it and learn stuff that would be dangerous or risky as a learner to do on your own computer. I for one usually use it to learn and make all sorts of mistakes and because its a virtual device I will simple remake another and retry my learning aims till I have perfected. For dual booting see this link for more help.

George Udosen
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  • Thank you for the reply, what do people usually use? Dual booting or virtual machine? Im learning linux so i can do web programming...not sure which is the best – user2998413 Aug 10 '18 at 05:41
  • What do you prefer or what are your needs I use use just Ubuntu and use Windows in a virtual device, it depends on your needs, what are they? – George Udosen Aug 10 '18 at 05:42
  • My need is doing web programming on ubuntu, but i also need windows for my school – user2998413 Aug 10 '18 at 05:49
  • @user2998413 Then use either Vmware or Virtual Box for Ubuntu. First, virtual machines can be backed up or cloned ( imho ) easier than regular installation. Two, it's a good practice before you actually install anything on the actual drive. Web programming can be done in virtual machine just fine. You may need to learn how to change certain network settings but it's also a skill worth learning, especially since virtual machines are popular in enterprise for security and backup reasons – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Aug 10 '18 at 06:02
  • @SergiyKolodyazhnyy okay thx, as long as i can do web dev with django...and for this you think i should go with virtual machine – user2998413 Aug 10 '18 at 17:16
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The trend is to use virtual machines instead of dual-booting, because dual-booting has two drawbacks:

  • changing systems is like rebooting, it requires stopping/restarting everything
  • it is like having two machines, even if some things can be shared

Previous drawbacks of virtual machines, like memory usage, or lack of virtualization of certain things (USB ports, graphics cards) have been either made benign by the capabilities of modern hardware or by improvement in the VM software.

Now, should you have Linux VMs on a Windows host or a Windows VM on a Linux host? Personally I run a Linux host that sometimes runs a Windows VM, but in your case a Windows host with Linux VMs would make sense, at least for a while. You can even avoid installing Linux by downloading pre-built "images" of all major distros for VirtualBox.

xenoid
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  • Ah ha thanks for the reply, i see the trend is to use vm eh...i wont do any video editing i will just work on django web development so i guess i will stick with vmware – user2998413 Aug 10 '18 at 17:21