i'm in linux for some time now and i love it so much. i'm currently in mint 16 which works nice but the main goal is archlinux, but for now linux mint is hard enough. i was wondering if i could install windows 7 pro in virtualbox with word excel and shit like that for school. i hate to boot into windows. i was wondering if i can play games like bf4 in virtualbox. the idea was installing the windows amd drivers (r9 270, r9 290 soon) and hope everything will run fine. i got a pretty good system so running 2 operating systems is no problem. i don know how many times i can install OEM windows 7 pro but i hope many times cuz i change operating systems alot recently and i just delete everything on the my ssd and hdd and start all over (i love dropbox). if i can install windows many times and the performance lose isn't really big <20% than i think i'm gonna do it. i don know if i need a virus scanner and if i get a virus, will it hurt linux?
i have used virtualbox before but i don know if i can make a 250gb partition on my hdd in linux and call it windows or whatever and use that space for windows and my windows games.
I may pirate windows 7 or 8.1 if I can't install my windows as many times i want.
EDIT: i can use my current windows drive for windows in virtualbox.
thanx, do you know how how to use virtualbox in fullsreen? i don't need the fullscreen mode when using windows with word but when gaming and i apply fullscreen mode, is it trully fullscreen mode? or do i still have the linux bars arround them and the virtualbox bars?
to my knowledge virtualbox does not have vga passthrough or even able to give enough power to run anything more intensive than a visual novel (i've messed around in windows, never tried much in linux but i don't think it's any different)
you can install windows as many times as you want, but only one installation at a time with reactivations necessary after the 1st time (just a phone call to their automated system and some long numbers)
i don't know much about it or the name but there's better virtualization utilities than vbox as far as power use, look around the subforum i know zoltan in particular has a number of write-ups
+1, Virtualbox is some serious piece of crap: it's proprietary and just like nVidia crap the proprietary kernel modules Virtualbox requires, ALWAYS fail to compile on new kernels.
In linux, if you want the most performance, you want kvm, it's as simple as that. If you just need ease of management for multiple virtual machines for server applications, kvm is not always the best choice because many enterprises use pretty old linux distros that don't yet have the latest open source management tools. For very old linux environments, commercial virtual machine management tools are still probably the best solution, but the closed source pioneer solutions like VMWare ESX, which are still very popular in the enterprise world because it's a way to manage linux servers from a Windows machine easily mainly, have their problems, they are not the best solutions anymore, also because many management consoles are not running Windows anymore, either because of legal compliance prohibiting unsafe software like Windows in certain industries, or because of linux based platform just overtaking traditional PC's, a lot of management of server containers now just happens through Android devices. This evolution makes closed source commercial hypervizor solutions pretty useless. Xen is also pretty nice, but still just a bit slower than kvm.
i probably use kvm in archlinux, i'm installing arch in 3 days probably or maybe a week later. will kvm work with only a igpu and a r9 290? i prefer to not use the igpu since it uses ram and i allready need more ram. also i game in linux, and i game in windows so i need the gpu for both. i'm currently on 1 144hz 1080p screen but it also needs to work with more screens. (in 2 years when i buy a 4k screen i keep my 1080p screen:))
i also have an i7 4770k 4.5ghz which works fine for gaming but it doesn have vt-d support or something like that, is that a problem?
Oftopic, is it possible to have a 1080p screen and 144hz and a 4k screen on 144hz? on a r9 290?