Hey, I was wondering if there is pros and cons on installing Linux distribution on a HDD,virtual machine (VritaulBox), SD Card, USB Flash Drive, ect. Just want to know, I was having trouble with installing it with Windows 8 and was not allowing me to dual-boot (I will post that in another thread if you guys would like to join in the discussion).
What do you need win 8 for? maybe we can help you just use linux instead?
Really depends on your hardware. In some cases you can install Linux in a VM and it'll be close to the hardware but not quite as good as installing it on the hardware. I wouldn't recommend running Linux from a USB stick unless you're going to stick with the same computer. If you're running 64-bit it wont work on a 32-bit system. You could run into issues with BIOS limitations and UEFI problems. As for which medium to use it would mostly depend on the speed of it.
Need it for games and college software. I could substitute it with different software but need windows mainly for games (Origins, Steam, ect.)
If I do USB, I will only use it on my main desktop.
You will be much happier if you get rid of Windows. Just play the games in Wine.
I would love to get rid of windoze altogether, but when you are playing World of Tanks and Warplanes and soon, Warships, all by Wargaming.net, you need windoze, for the graphic intensiveness. I tried to work with Wine to get them to run and even tried to do it with virtual desktops, and the lag was sooo, bad that Sabayon almost locked up on me.
And then there is Steam that is trying to get game manufacturers to program for Linux, but of course I am hooked on the ones that haven't crossed that line yet like Koei, who has the Dynasty Warriors series. Until you can actually play those games, as good as they are in Windoze, or even better, then I will just keep Windowze 7 as a gaming platform, and do everything else in Sabayon.
On a side note, I believe that more hardware vendors need to build to be friendly to Linux. Friends of M$ in their own partnerships with M$, are not friendly to Linux users. So let me know when you have those games running in Linux, just as good as they do in Windoze, and I will be really grateful. Along with others who wish to do the same. Maybe you can get these games to run on Unix, like PC-BSD, a wrapper that runs on FreeBSD, that uses the .zfs file system. I like PC-BSD, for everything that I have done in Linux, actually seems like it runs faster, and that would be great for game play.
With the cost of external drives being down now that they have been around awhile, you can do what I have done. I have Windows 7 on the drive that came with the box, and Sabayon 14.6 on the external drive. The nice thing about Sabayon is that it will see the Windows drive in the MBR for Sabayon so that you only need to go into the BIOS once, to make the external drive the first to boot, after the optical drive(DVD). When you want to boot to Windows, just scroll down to it, and it will boot, after the click. Sabayon 14.6 is a great Linux distro in my opinion. Sabayon and SeaMonkey for the browser, you can set it up to automatically play youtube in the HD format. All without the hassles you get in Windows to play HD. Have fun and enjoy college.
To answer your question, the main difference will be speed. Different external media will have different read/write speeds. And you will notice that when using linux off of them. The fastest being on your hard drive.
If you install it to a USB, theres no reason you should have to "Use it on the same computer" as mentioned above. you can use it on any PC. It would be a portable installation. Linux is very good with driver support, so there is no reason you would need to keep it on the same PC.
@Basweegen
Install linux on whatever you can get your hands on. Learn it. Love it. Live it.
I like my sanity a lot more than I like games. If I can't get a game to play in Linux, then I just won't play it.
Thank you for giving me what I was mainly asking :)
That should be the slogan when trying to introduce linux to people
I have a linux installation in a virtual machine and it's as responsive as it would be directly on hardware.
Xubuntu in VMware worksation, if you are interested.
Another option to have both at the same time is to virtualize windows inside linux with VGA passthrough, though that has some requirements for your hardware.