Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Why do you need multiple computers when you can have multiboot and use one computer to run different OSes?

Cause it's not fun having to reboot every time you want to run a Windows program, especially if it means dealing with Windows nagging.

I can live with this if I occasionally want to play so-called “AAA” games. I don’t use Windows for anything else.

In a way, it's worse the less frequently you want to play, cause it means you'll have to wait for Windows updates every time. But it works.

If you're careful with how you handle the ESP and other shared drives on Linux's side, I found it reasonably ergonomic to suspend to disk, rather than hard shut down, when switching between OSes.

At least back when win10 was new, Proton is good enough that I haven't needed Windows in a good few years.

It's actually a pretty good thing to compartmentalize your computer. I use it to reduce procrastination.

Put all your fun things on one OS (or user account), and all your business stuff on another (possibly blocking distractions via hosts or firewall rules); and you've added a bunch of friction to switching from work to play. Not that it can't be done, but it needs to be a deliberate choice and you can't just bounce between them.

I've found that this only works in very specific circumstances. If you have any flexibility to your work schedule (which is a lot more common nowadays with any amount of remote work) this becomes massively inconvenient, as every small context switch means reseting your current system state (eg closing your dev tools).

I don't really have a set work schedule, so it's normal for me to jump between a work context and a play context. It's much easier to do by very rarely rebooting my computer (once or twice a month), so I can always pick up where I left off. The regularly scheduled update meetings do a good enough job of keeping procrastination in check.

Better to quit playing video games altogether

Author said he was using KVM switch, hence multiple computers. Also you can't install macOS on a PC. Also you might need switching between OS in real time and often. Just some thoughts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com