New
#11
Thanks for coming back to my original question, and I reckon it's been answered, that I won't trash my Windows 10 machine, only the Virual "hard drive" I've set up for the VM.
Thanks for confirming that.
Hi there
On a VM it should run at near native speed -- not my favourite distro but that's another issue.
As for slow speed --I've got CENTOS 7 on an external old Laptop HDD that I "cannabalized" from a defunct laptop and it runs really fine plugged into the usb port via a SATA-->USB2 or better -->USB3 connector. I even bring up a Windows VM on it and it runs perfectly fine too.
I "cloned" the whole thing to an SSD and it runs almost as fast as natively booting. There's almost no lag in starting the Windows VM too from this SSD.
OK that's not what the OP was wanting -- he might want to learn about VM's or HYPER-V or both -- why not VM's are excellent as a learning tool.
All you need is to have enough RAM and make sure the HOST is not too busy when using the VM.
This talk of poor performance on VM's these days on reasonably modern hardware is PURE BOVINE SCATOLOGY --
Lack of RAM will be an issue --shouldn't be a problem these days - even a modest laptop usually has 8GB RAM fitted - in any case Linux distros don't need much unless you run huge overbloated GUI's on them).
I can't stress this often enough but over the years the biggest single issue I've found in poor computer performance has been the incredibly poor performance and quality of consumer HDD's. These days with SSD's, and the use of NAS boxes and home servers HDD's have improved in quality - but slow HDD's will absolutely KILL any system even with dual or quad i7 processors in them. !!!!!!
VMware workstation is now 12.1 - fixes a few issues with various video drivers - especially if you want to try on a 4K UHD TV.
There is an equivalent VMware player (free) but you have to hunt for it since there is a paid VMware player version too. - Seems all these companies are making their Free stuff harder and harder to find. VMware workstation is paid for software but really great in managing VM's - you can run them as servers (i.e in the background) and use dynamic RAM rather than have to have it all allocated in advance and a number of other things -- for normal casual home users the Freebie is perfectly OK. I get VMware workstation from work otherwise I'd be wuite happy with VMware player.
Hyper-V also has a few issues with USB as well as sound so it might not be the best choice if you want to play around with bits of hardware on your VM.
Cheers
jimbo