On 06/28/2010 11:53 PM, Jason Hsu, embedded engineer, Linux user wrote: > Is there any good reason to dual boot Windows given the option of installing Windows in VirtualBox? I haven't tried VirtualBox yet, but it sounds awesome - being able to try out various operating systems without having to burn CDs and without having to dedicate a whole partition to Windows or another guest OS. > > The only drawback I can think of is the increased RAM and processor speed requirements (due to the need to run both the host OS and guest OS simultaneously). > > (In case you're wondering, the only thing I've done in Windows that I haven't found a Linux/open source substitute for is working with a Xilinx FPGA kit.) > I can give you two good reasons. The first is computer games. Wine can't run everything, and even when it does it usually comes with hassles that most would rather not deal with. I'm an avid combat flight-simmer, and of the 3 combat flight sims I'm often found playing, none of them work in Wine sufficiently well for me to enjoy my time. A second, and bigger reason is DirectX development. I got into DX development about 3 years ago and I haven't looked back since. Microsoft may be an evil corporation that makes a lot of mistakes, but one thing they never seem to fail on is the quality of their programmer tools. I can develop a 3D application in DirectX in about half the time it takes me in OpenGL, since DirectX's API is just that much better. Most importantly, with DirectX I can do pretty much everything that I'm going to in the engine I'm writing out of the box. With OpenGL I'm often dependent on multiple 3rd party bolt-on APIs and Libraries, some of which most likely aren't License friendly if I'm making software that will be sold or used commercially. Overall, all of the extra APIs and libraries make the code much more difficult to maintain over time. That said, OpenGL still has a special place in my heart, and I still tinker and use it occasionally, but professionally I'm still going to be using DirectX for a while to come. VirtualBox has some limited DirectX graphics support now, but I've found it insufficient for both of these tasks. -Adam