I want to be sure about something first, how can I know if my hardware doesn't have IOMMU lock, and that I will be capable to enable Harware virtualizaton to run Windows only games and other crap properly. My specs are: MOBO: GIGABYTE F2A88XM-HD3 CPU: APU 6400K GPU: ASUS HD 6450 running in Dual Graphics with my APU RAM: PNY 4GB 1600
That its one concern I have, another one is, As you see my hardware is not very powerful, so my question is: Can I give almost all my hardware potential to those encapsulated Windows apps without messing with the actual Linux operation?
And my final request of help is: I am planning to use Elementary Luna or Ubuntu as a start point, what are the best and noob friendly tutorials you know about learning to install programs in linux, and all the basic stuff?
Yeah no. You have to at least have some resources for the host in order for the system to run.
You can not just through all your hardware to windows unfortunately.
However you can still dual boot which would work fine for you.
Elementary OS is a great OS period. A lot of people think it is too simple and bare, but I really like it, and I think you will too.
Something you will be happy about is that any ubuntu based distro has a built in app store. You just open up the app store, find a program you like, and click install.
Any time you want to install a program that is not in the app store, the program's website will generally have a small how to on installing the software.
So pretty much everything is already done for you. Pretty slick huh?
Thanks for your answer. So you recommend me to upgrade my hardware before I try the virtualization thing? Also, do you think that starting with Fedora or OpenSUSE its too much for a complete newbie like me? Can I do a lot of partitions and install a lot of Distros just to test them?
I would recommend doing the opposite of what Zoltan is suggesting. That is of course if you are new to Linux. You will most likely pull your hair our if you make the switch cold turkey. The A6-6400K does support virtualization. Ubuntu should run on as little as 512 MB ram. A gig would be better fitting. I would suggest installing virtual box in windows and installing Ubuntu as a guest OS on windows until you can can work out the learning curve. Just run it full screen as often as you can and try to forget about windows. After you get through that, try what Zoltan said. It sounds like a really nice setup. I see too many people get all excited about linux and jump right into a brick wall. Ease yourself in or you might end up hating it. Good Luck!
try using ubuntu. Theres a way you can use it without having to make a partition for it. It keeps the whole OS inside a folder in your main OS. Forgot what it's called, though. But it works really well if you wanna try it out.
Yeah. I mean my only real issue when I look at your build is the cpu. When you run a VM, you will probably want at least a quad core so that you can have two cores for linux and two cores for windows.
I also want to make this clear. Running a VM is not for the faint of heart, and if you are hell bent on doing it, then I recommend you run windows and then use what ever distro you want in a virual machine.
And just as a head up, you can get a super cheap socket 1366 build now for about 100 bucks. An i7 920 is about 40-50 bucks and a decent board is about the same. If you add another stick of ram to the build for another 20 or so bucks, you would be perfectly setup to run any VM you want.
I also want to add that you can try openSUSE, but it is a steeper learning curve than ubuntu/elementary OS/mint
I would not recommend fedora though. OpenSUSE does have some built in tools to make your life easy..er, but fedora just dumps you in fedora land and you either sink or swim.
It is not that fedora is bad or hard to learn, but I just do not know what you feel comfortable with and what you don't.
My recommendation is to use ubuntu with the gnome desktop. Learn how to use the command line a little bit and learn how to add your own theme to the desktop.
Get comfortable with linux for maybe like a week or two before jumping to something like OpenSUSE or Fedora.
And just so you don't freak out, if you are installing VirtualBox to try it under windows and you haven't installed it already, It's going to screw with you IP a bit so your might have to mess with your internet setup a bit. Or change your port fowarding if it's aimed at the wrong address.
Thanks everyone for your answers, I will follow them and try some distros in a virtual machine at Windows and then, maybe a Dual boot until I feel good enough to do what Zoltan suggested in his post. Also I will upgrade all my hardware anyway I just don't want to buy any shit that doesn't support Hardware virtualization and of course an AMD GPU.