I thought I remember Wendell saying there is no point to run Windows on bare metal. It was on one of the news on YT probably within the last year, but I can’t find it.
With there being very capable low power Minix ITX hardware, do you guys think the days of running Windows on bare metal is slowing.
I’m not trying to be an absolutist, and I know they aren’t mutual exclusive, but I am older and very set in my particular workflow.
I can see many flaws with bare metal Windows and much more advantages with a VM. However I know the most important thing is not everyone has the use case that I do and therefore I would like to know when you would choose Windows on bare metal.
I thought I remember Wendell saying there is no point to run Windows on bare metal. It was on one of the news on YT probably within the last year, but I can’t find it.
Possibly this?
So long as laptops sold at Best Buy come with Windows there will always be bare metal Windows. The typical user accepts defaults.
What you do with your computers should not be influenced by what other people do. Run whatever you want so long as it meets your needs.
The takeaway shouldn’t be “Windows on bare metal is dead” but “any operating system that doesn’t utilize virtual machines as a security feature isn’t doing enough to protect user privacy”. It’s not that Windows couldn’t have more advanced capabilities just that it currently doesn’t.
The question is not what are the reasons, but what are the circumstances for Wendell making that comment.
tl;dr answer is: He has been saying that for at least a year as a blanket response to many security [and other] flaws.
As for if it is impacting the adoption of Linux, I believe not. VFIO is a specific subset of users and that one does not affect the overall numbers. For each person running a VM now, there is another person just getting to Windows as a regular user.
I think it is still easier to run Linux in a VM then the opposite
It sounds like your use case is more general-purpose/productivity, rather than “gaming”? It also sounds like you might be using an older version of Windows, and not the latest/“greatest”? If both of those are true then I think your premise is correct.
If the overhead of an OS is relatively fixed, hardware advances ultimately mean those fixed resource overheads can be handled without any meaningful impact on application performance. Windows 7- running in VMs on “mainstream” hardware feels really snappy for this reason.
However, if you’re always chasing the latest/“greatest”, then lazy programmers will just burden you with bloated OS code. That overhead needs more resources, so will impact on application performance more than an older/simpler OS.
(This all assumes that new versions of the OS don’t implement some sort of “miracle” feature that magically makes virtualisation tremendously more efficient.)
So, as a general statement, if you are happy with a specific version of an OS, then yes, there comes a time when new — yet mainstream — hardware is so capable that running your specific version of an OS in a VM yields such “acceptable” results that running it on bare metal no longer makes sense. You may as well virtualise your system and then enjoy the many benefits that VMs have to offer.
Emphasis should be on “a”. VMs are just one part of a security solution. If used correctly. Which the vast majority of users don’t. They’re not a silver bullet. Just like airbags in cars are a good idea, but just don’t provide much protection when 95% of the population drive their cars backwards.
If you’re running HyperV on windows, guess what? Even the “base” install of windows is no longer running entirely on bare metal. It’s running on top of HyperV, which isn’t windows.