Multi-OS setup: dual/multi-boot vs virtualbox

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2015-10-26 at 07:33 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> 
> On 10/26/2015 05:55 AM, Max Pyziur wrote:
> > I'm a novice at assessing the question of  multi-boot vs using
> > virtualbox.
> > 
> > I've seen a lot of discussion on this topic on this email list;
> > some
> > of it expressed with frustration ("I can't upgrade my Fedora
> > installation because of my multi-boot setup ..."; or "why use a
> > multi-boot system; use VirtualBox").
> > 
> > So my general interest is to continue using Fedora as my primary
> > OS;
> > but enough times, I need to use the MS Office suite.
> > 
> > I have a laptop (Dell Latitude E6220 with MS Windows 7
> > factory-installed; 750GB HD, 8GB RAM). I've begun a few multi-boot
> > installations using Fedora, to see what some of direct challenges
> > are
> > (the first steps to shrink an existing partition, in order to
> > create
> > room for a Fedora installation). But have never completed an
> > installation.
> > 
> > Advice, thoughts? 
> 
> Sounds as if you're asking for opinions.  So, I'll give you mine.
> 
> I've never used dual-boot and never saw the need in my use case.  The
> only reason I would consider using dual-boot over VM's is if I were a
> "gamer", and I'm not.  I use Windows for a few things but the things
> I
> use it for don't benefit from direct access to the video hardware. 
> Also, the things I use Windows for don't suffer from any performance
> issues running in a VM.

I second that. A VM avoids the issues of multi-boot, gives acceptable
performance for running productivity applications (especially if you
use the VBox drivers within Windows) and easily shares files with the
host system. You can also configure it to use an elastic filesystem
(i.e. the maximum guest disk size is set but it only occupies what you
are actually using).

poc