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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

Dual boot? This does look slick, I was an avid WSL user until I started dual booting. Now I almost never need to boot to Windows.

I get that if you often need to switch it can be a pain in the ass but at least Linux respects my privacy and freedom.

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As the author of EasyBCD, I can tell you that interest in dual-booting has collapsed to near zero over the past decade.

Anecdata, but I used to dual boot, until Windows mucked up the Linux boot more than once. Didn't play nice. So I run Windows in a VM now, it's not getting near the boot sector again.

Yep. I have a strict "Dual boot on dual drives" policy now because Windows thinks its too precious.

It only played to their disadvantage, for machines with single storage device now doesn't boot Windows at all or only from VM.

How much of that effect do you think is due to recent Windows versions not playing nicely so you still get some hassle anyway and/or to improving options to run Windows virtually on a Linux host with close to native performance and compatibility?

What do you mean by "not playing nicely". With UEFI boot you can dual boot all day. There is no need to modify MBR. So nothing gets overwritten on updates.

I didn't say dual booting was itself the source of the danger (though it is true that in days gone by that was also a source of problems).

The issue I had in mind was the unrestricted hardware access that Windows has if it is running natively. This is an operating system that has literally pushed updates that inadvertently deleted user data, among other severe problems, and that will deploy its updates automatically to many users. Dual booting won't ensure the integrity of your system against that kind of threat. Running Windows in a virtual environment means it can't damage the rest of your system even if it deploys a seriously broken update without warning. And that kind of virtualisation is getting more practical all the time even if for now it remains the preserve of serious Linux hackers.

Same situation here. Dual-booting Linux and Windows 10, and I figured I'd boot into Windows often enough for it to get obnoxious. But I only ever get on there to play a few demanding games (which I already don't play often anymore), or make music with an A+ DAW for making music that doesn't run super effectively on Wine. Linux handles everything else I do like a champ.

A friend of mine has been complaining that a DAW is the only thing keeping him stuck in Windows at this point as well. In his case, he specifically said that VST's were the problem. Was your experience the same?

Bitwig is a very good DAW with native Linux support. It's made by former Ableton devs so it definitely leans in that direction, but it works pretty well for other types of workflows too, especially with the recently released version 4.

VSTs are definitely an issue; most high quality commercial plugins are still only released for mac/windows. However there are a few projects for running them in wine and it generally works pretty well.

I do think we'll see more and more Linux in studios going forward, but it would help if Linux got its pro audio story together. Pipewire is a big step in the right direction but not yet mature.

Yep, for me it's the DAW and VSTs that keep me needing Windows for now. You can try to make them work with Wine or whatever, but it's not worth the hassle.

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