[Techtalk] Questions About Virtualisation Workflow

[Miss Casey Marie Earnshaw]

Hi everyone

Thanks for taking the time to read my email.

My question is regarding virtual machines and setting up a base
operating system for them.

I'm going to try not to go off on too much of a tangent here but this is
still all new and exciting to me and I'm still in the set up phase.

I am running ubuntu on my laptop and it's running fine. I don't really
use my laptop for anything too complicated, just tend to watch youtube
and facebook on it, on my desktop though I am still running Windows 10
and I'd like to change that.
I've been reading as much as I can about Linux this last month and I've
started to become more comfortable with things like the command line.
Being able to SSH from my phone into my laptop felt amazing when I first
managed it but ultimately kind of pointless at this stage. Hopefully
this helps give you an idea of where I am at on my journey. Still very
much a beginner but past the initial anxieties.

So I recently started learning about virtual machines and how you can
install a computer inside a computer. I tried it out a little bit on my
windows system and it's impressive. I've not really spent a huge amount
of time playing with it but at a first glance it seems like it might be
just as good as having something installed.

I do tend to just use my computers for every day tasks, a little bit of
gaming, facebook, music, email the everyday stuff but I'm interested in
educating myself and learning how to do a little bit more. I think I'd
like to learn a little bit about programming, find a way of recording
some music, keep learning about Linux and continue doing all the basic
things. Also I can potentially see value in keeping Windows around for
some specific applications that I use, just while I keep playing with
WINE and searching for viable alternatives at the very least.

So after experimenting with VMs I could quickly see how potentially the
work flows for each of the above could be kept separately on one system.
Different distros have different goals and there might be a good reason
to keep things separate like that.

I understand that there is going to be a performance hit as it is having
to run my operating system as well as the VM. However, are there any
more disadvantages to running things through a VM that takes a little
bit of time to wear on you. (I.E. I wouldn't have necessarily noticed
when experimenting)

That being said I wonder if its actually better to have just one install
with all the software I need? I think most packages can be installed on
every distro after all.

Alternatively there's always the multi boot option, but that seems like
it could get confusing very quickly with all the partitions needed.

I am thinking that I would at least like to try this idea out and it
might be a case of throwing tech at the wall and seeing what sticks, my
idea is to install lubuntu or mint xfce as the base operating system to
try and keep the system needs low. (I'm considering even trying to use
something like a window manager to make it even lower but maybe that
will come later, this is quite a big project already before deciding to
do away with the mouse!). Hopefully this works out and I can stick with
Linux forever. I'm mostly wondering if anyone has tried something like
this before and if there is anything you could tell me that you wish you
knew when you were at my stage.

Thanks again for reading and I hope your week goes great! The system
specs for the curious are: Intel Core i5 4460 3.2GHz, 8GB RAM, 2TB HDD,
AMD Radeon R9 380 4GB

Casey x