Need help switching to linux

ok guys here is my situation. i love linux! but my main computer is used for work games and it is the only computer that hasn’t got off windows. all other computers in my house run ubuntu.

here is what keeps me from switching, SOFTWARE

i have to use sketchup for work, and it is a hassle to dual boot. i know because it is right now and i never boot it to linux. haha
should i just figure out how to setup a VM for windows? it seems like the play on windows can kinda be a pain.

how should i go about this?

VMware Workstation, Hyper-V, or VirtualBox.

Install Ubuntu.

Install vmtools.

Use both.

agreed, before I switched to linux only, I ran ubuntu in virtualbox seamless for a long time. but if you really want to push things to the limit, and you have the hardware to, you could check out the qemu/pass-thru and looking glass project

can i use my current widows setup in a VM? or do i have to do a fresh install? i currently have antergos on another ssd in the machine. i think i’m going to try antergos with gnome, i’m not really digging kde

You can convert a running windows OS into a VDI for vmware but this is a paid feature.

didn’t someone make a guide here in the forums to convert a running windows to a qemu version that could still be booted normally if you need

If you chose to go with qemu/KVM then you could either pass-through your existing Windows drive, providing Windows is on it’s own physical drive. Or you could copy and convert it to a qcow2 image.

is qemu the looking glass stuff? i do have 2 1060 and a 570. but i’m still rocking a fx8350. i really need to upgrade :grimacing:

looking glass is just software to run the qemu/pass-thru in a window on your main OS instead of having to get a separate keyboard/mouse and monitor for it

how does that deal with the cores on a cpu? can they share cpu? or do you have to give up half of your cpu power to each os?

it’s still normal qemu, so yeah it’s going to eat the resources. so the guest os can’t use the full power of the cpu because the host needs it’s share, and the same in the other direction. I have not seen it ever lock cores to one or another, but host get priority, that being said linux doesn’t need a lot to idle in, so I have never had issues running heavy loads in VMs after allocating 80% of my cpu to said VM. Ram is a different story, I have noticed windows VMs allocating it’s ram section even if it’s not using it, so if I forget to make sure I don’t have dozens and dozens of firefox tabs open I have accidentally pushed things into swap before.

ok so for now this is the hardware i have to through at it. what would you guys do if you were me.

fx 8350
2x1060s
2x 500gb ssds
32gb ram

i do alot of cad type stuff, video editing, and graphic design stuff.

If you want to use Linux, but still depend on Windows programs for your creative software. I would recommend that you go with a QEMU/KVM virtual machine.

This will allow you to passthrough your GPU/s to the the Windows VM for use with your CAD, video editing etc.

It’s very well documented here.

Your hardware looks fine to me. I set up the same thing last year on a FX 8350 for gaming. The result was a bit too “stuttery” for gaming. However! There has been an NPT fix in the Linux kernel since I tried this. And I believe performance should be a whole lot better for your CPU because of it.

+1 for Antergos also. It’s a great distro :grinning:

the first question I would ask regarding your hardware, is do you use your 1060s in SLI

awesome i will look at that link. if anyone has any more tutorials/reading material i would appreciate it.

thanks guys

BTW, software has always held me back from switching and it sucks. i switched video editing software just because davinchi resolve has a linux version

no i don’t use sli.

i’m not really a gamer. i just wanted to see if it would help with video rendering to add a second one.

then it shouldn’t be a problem to split them up. the forum’s looking glass thread is here, it has tons of resources in it, and you can ask question if you run into problems

if i go that route can i just point it to my existing windows hdd?

I believe so, I don’t think that there is any drivers that you need to install. I haven’t done this myself have.