N. T. wrote:

> OK, does anyone use the VM installation (*nix under Win, or Win
> under Win) not only for development and testing, but for some more
> or less critical task?

I have several VMs running Windows under Fedora (and a few running Fedora
and Ubuntu).  One of them is for a critical task; using the State's
Critical Incident Mangement System, although it is a pretty simple,
lightweight task.

I use the others for MPLAB.  I get folks asking questions about this or
that version of MPLAB, and in spite of Microchip's attempts, multiple
versions of MPLAB don't play well together.  A VM is a simple, easy way to
deal with that.

> Personally, I think, I would not use VM at all, I woiuld just install
> another system in a new partition. Rebooting is not a big hassle
> compared to the hassle of troubleshhoting Windows potentially affected
> by the VM installation.

There really isn't a hassle in troubleshooting, at least with KVM, and in
fact, it seems like reliability is increased by having fewer applications
competing with each other.  Windows is surprisingly stable if you only
ever do one thing.

And there is a whale of a big difference in "hassle" between dropping
everything you are doing and rebooting just to use some Windows app, as
opposed to simply opening the window with the app.  For me, at least, it
isn't the rebooting that is the problem, it's dropping the things I am
working on.

I have a couple of dual-boot machines, but they almost never get Windows
booted.  The single machine I have that actually gets used for Windows is
orders of magnitude more hassle than my multiple Windows VMs.

--McD


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