Colleged student debating on getting an Ubuntu laptop

[Vadi]

Virtualbox does not require a CPU extension to do virtualization so you'll be just fine. It's just that if you want to install VMware that it'll be needing it (and virtualbox only benefits from the cpu extension on 64bit hosts & guests, otherwise its not much use).

Serval 3 here with an 8600gt, works fine for a 3h lecture with wireless on or a bit less time for etqw

[betrunkenaffe]

Went to 2 universities so far and both have had the majority of coursework on nix machines. There was in total 3 classes that actually required Windows, 2 Human Computer Interaction courses and a Distributed Computing (used asp and their nix machines didn't have it on them)

For the classes that required Windows, I had to use the machines at the university anyways. (and I was using Windows at home at the time)

[glacialfury]

The only thing you'll experience slowdowns on in a virtual machine, at least in day-to-day software use, would be applications that use video hardware; this is emulated in a virtual machine, so there's no true hardware acceleration.

Bear in mind for programming, depending on school flexibility, you could do C# with mono and GTK, since GTK is available for Windows as well - you just need to make sure wherever your app gets deployed has GTK.

And speaking of that, you can run GIMP on Windows anyway

[Derath]

I believe that Intel processor does not have virtualization support. You may find it useful to upgrade to one that does.

I have the P8400 Intel, and it does have the virtualization support on the chip, not sure if that's relevant or note, but most of the Intel chips manufactured within the last year or two do have the virtualization. I can't remember the command nor the flags, but there was a cpu-info command that would say whether or not it had it...