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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

One of the first things I do when I setup Windows is setup an instance of VirtualBox running Ubuntu in headless mode. Then I can SSH into that and do anything I could do with Linux plus do all the windows things.

I'm not really sure what the overhead is since I usually have 16GB or 32GB of ram anyway.

That aside I feel the article is applying a double standard. Someone who properly can use Linux can easily resolve most of the authors criticisms. It's also possible to run Windows (haven't tried on 11, but is possible with 10) on a USB stick or external hard drive. You can also install Windows (10) trivially on most machines. Certain Linux variants also have telemetry, etc.

I enjoy Linux, I also enjoy Windows. There's no need to create a false dichotomy. It's very easy to just run both. Best tool for the job and what not.

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I’m going to be contrarian here, screw WSL and VM Ubuntu and install Linux with a Windows Virtualbox. Much better and more practical.

how is it much better? without knowing what applications are used that seems like a bit of an overstatement.

All reasons people complain about requirements for using Windows (telemetry, ads everywhere, software lock-in, etc.).

This is an article about skipping Windows 11 and switching to Linux. Not some way to run Linux on Windows.

yeah but you're replying to my comment tho so that's what I assumed it was "better" than. doesn't make sense to me otherwise (e.g. from just the article why introduce windows at all)

If you’re trying to remain in a Windows environment then there’s no advantage. If you’re trying leave to a particular OS then it’s best to start using it and migrate other files over time. Otherwise you leave the migration work and the actual use to some physical task. Installing Windows as a VM allows you to then remove it or treat it as a secondary OS instead of something you’re tied to.

right, but my point is that like you point out you can use windows and linux simultaneously, so which you have as the "main" or host really just depends on what applications you use.

either way you can use both windows and linux on the same machine so I was confused with your initial reply.

Why not WSL2 instead? It's a very smooth experience nowadays.

I attempted to use Void Linux in WSL2 and hit problems the moment I tried to build a package. It seems that you're considered to be "in a chroot", which triggers security limitations on what you can do with kernel namespaces:

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/2981

You haven't needed VirtualBox for that in some years. Windows has a Linux subsystem now.

I also run Linux in VirtualBox, but never headless. Customizing Linux desktops is half the fun, honestly. Plus distro hopping is fun. I have about 20+ paused Linux VMs at any given time.

Why not use WSL?

I've been doing this since Windows 7 and WSL wasn't available then. Old habits die hard, I guess.

I also use Ubuntu with i3 when I'm trying to be particularly productive. Unfortunately Windows doesn't have something I find to be as good (I'm happy for suggestions if you think there's a tiling manager for Windows that's equivalent to i3).

Powertoys for Windows is an excellent tiling manager.

It's more bspwm than i3, but I am the (very active) developer and maintainer of komorebi, a tiling window manager for Windows 10 and 11: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi

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