Best virtualization: Ubuntu within Windows or Windows within Ubuntu?

[veloce]

I do care that I can use my Dual Monitors which have different
resolutions, with an extented Desktop across both monitors.

I can only do that with XP as host and Ubuntu as guest,
because the ATI/amd windows drivers are a lot better
at this time than their Linux counterparts.
cheers!

dual monitors with different resolutions with an extended desktop across both monitors is certainly possible under Ubuntu. (Been there, done that). Yes it is harder than under windows - but not impossible.

Ubuntu's memory management and smp are more than worth the one time hassle of getting the screens working.

[Hobo2021]

I think it really depends on what you use your system for the most. I would prefer to run Ubuntu with Windows as a virtual machine, but for me, I've learned, it's just not in the cards. I use Adobe products heavily, and running it in a VM limits the amount of RAM I can use, and I was never successful in getting my Wacom to work within it. Additionally, I have an X-Fi and that's just (probably) never going to work with the way Creative is not releasing drivers.

I pretty much use my Ubuntu VM for development, and Windows for everything else. Also, running Windows in VM used a ridiculous amount of memory and CPU (okay, not ridiculous, but you'd know it was running)..but so far running Ubuntu as VM it's using 20 MB of RAM and 0% CPU utilization. Even with a few programs running the usage doesn't climb significantly.

[Victory]

I'm assuming you want to use vmware to run a physical installation of Windows? My experience with that hasn't been too good.

Purely from a perspective which looks at sustainability booting into Windows natively and running Ubuntu withing that is the best option. First of all let me clarify that opinion is only considering sustainability, you can form your own view in regards to flexibility and security.

I have both ran Windows natively and booted into Ubuntu, as well as ran Ubuntu natively an vmwared Windows. First of all I found Windows a hell of a lot more difficult to setup with all guides recommending the use of vmware toolboxes scsi drivers when they were not required at all for IDE drives, this caused (and still causes many people) several sleepless nights trying to sort out the problem. However once configuration is done you wouldn't think that there's be a sustainability problem in running this configuration, but alas there is... the existence of Microsoft's WGA program.

My intention was to use Ubuntu as the primary operating system however with my private server community (lets leave the legality of this for another thread) I still need to develop things using windows utilities etc etc which I planned to use vmware for. However I would occasionally need to boot into Windows natively to testrun the game clients as vmware at this stage is not very good for gaming (and neither seems any other solution for 3d direct 9).

How WGA comes into play. Once you've got vmware running Windows it'll prompt you to activate your copy of windows within the next 3 days. No problem, just activate online and away we go. Once doing all my developing and configuring the time comes to boot into windows natively and try out my changes on the game clients. Upon native booting Windows finds that it has had too many hardware changes once again, and requires activation. The use of separate configured hardware profiles does not fix this and so you will find yourself continually activating windows..

There are workarounds to this problem perhaps but I wanted a no fuss solution so in my situation I've had to get rid of Ubuntu for that particular computer.

[veloce]

Whereas my experience of using a windows vm under ubuntu has been excellent. The key point of difference is that I don't need 3d in windows. This means I only had to reactivate windows once and it's sorted.

The key advantage for me is that I have far less cr@p installed in my virtual windows and it actually runs faster than natively! Plus, Ubuntu handles memory and smp so much better.

So my experience has been:

• A 512Mb windows XP machine in a 1Gb Ubuntu physical machine works well.
• A 512Mb Ubuntu vm in a 1Gb Windows XP physical machine was a dog.

So, as per usual, selection of the best tool is dependent on the job you want to do with it.

[the8thstar]

Thank you guys for all your feedback and replies. At this point, I'm going to leave the two systems separate. Both are excellent in their respective domains and they are nice complements to each other.

With only 1Gb of RAM, it seems too difficult to run both at the same time. Also, I understand Ubuntu becomes a resource hog under Vista and Vista doesn't like to run under Ubuntu. Then, there is the activation bit and the Microsoft EULA that deter me from wasting my time on this.

My only real interest at running the two systems together was to allow Office 2007 to run. From what I understand, Office can run on Windows 2000 as well; the nice part is that there is no activation required for that OS.

So... I'm gonna try and find a copy of Windows 2000 on eBay and run it under VMWare or VirtualBox, with Office 2007 installed in it.

In the meantime, I have made sure that all my files can be found in the same spot for Vista and Ubuntu. This way, I don't have to worry about looking for them forever on end. I have patched Vista to recognize ext2/ext3 partitions, so all is good.