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A question that always generates calm and reasonable discussion: What OS do you use? | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 149 comments | Search Discussion
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  • (Score: 1) by WillR on Monday August 17 2015, @08:20PM

    by WillR (2012) on Monday August 17 2015, @08:20PM (#224080)
    Or you can just boot into Windows so the games have access to all the resources of your hardware, and not worry about building a specialized all-AMD gaming virtualization station.

    It's not 1998 anymore, we aren't going to judge your short uptime!

  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:19AM

    by Marand (1081) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:19AM (#224222) Journal

    It's not about the uptime, at least in my case; it's about the inconvenience. I've been dual booting for games for a long time and it's frequently a massive pain in the ass, enough so that I decided I want to move away from it in the future even if it requires extra setup.

    One of the problems is that dual-booting just for games means that you take away access to your primary OS any time you want to fire up a game. So, you either can't do anything else during that time or you have to duplicate parts of your primary environment in Windows too. Plus you can't do something else while waiting on Windows to boot, update, reboot, etc.

    So, instead of just "boot Windows, play game" it ends up being "boot Windows, wait for updates to apply, get harassed about Flash to update, start browser to check something related to game, have to update that browser," and so on. The more stuff you need or want access to while playing, the more you have to install and manage, and it's still going to be a half-assed environment compared to your main environment.

    It might not seem like a big deal, but there's a lot of waiting involved and it gets frustrating. It's even worse if the games are online, since you tend to have downtime waiting on other people, or waiting in lobbies, etc. where you could normally alt-tab during and do something else, but with dual-boot you can't without duplicating your environment.

    With a VM or a second machine (maybe accessed via Steam's remote desktop thing), you don't have to duplicate your environment to access things, you don't have to deal with as much Windows environment generally, and when those Windows parts are updating or you're waiting on players, queues, etc. you can still do something useful with the main or host system. With dual-boot I find myself avoiding certain games just because I know I have to reboot to do it. All said, I find I'd rather do just about anything else instead of another dual-boot system.

    Of the two options (VM with passthough or a second system), a second system is the easier way, but I've been that route and want to do something different next time, partly "just because" and partly due to space, power use, and heat generation. So, the next update I do, I'm going to try getting a working passhtrough setup. I don't mind doing extra up-front work for easier management later (which is one of the reasons I use Debian) and, difficult or easy, it will be educational.