Do I Take The Linux Plunge?

[Danoff]

I have a linux laptop and a linux-based media server. Now my PC is dying (motherboard ATA controller failure) and I'm running an old copy of windows XP.

I'm about ready to buy some new computer parts to assemble a computer based around an i5 processor. I'm thinking I'll run Ubuntu 64 bit since XP is no longer being supported. I have a copy of windows 7 that I'm not really sure I want to use. Here's the thing, I play games and I use office.

So I could install my windows XP license in a virtual machine and boot it in linux in order to play Diablo 3 and run MS office when needed. I don't play a ton of games, and I don't use a whole lot of MS office, but it would be nice to have that compatibility.

Thoughts?

 

[BobK]

Sounds like it should work! I routinely play some old DOS/Windows game on my linux box, but I run them under Dosbox, not a VM/Windows installation.

As for Office, perhaps look into OpenOffice as well. Not sure what your needs are, but OpenOffice works fine for me; I have it on both my linux box and my windows machine although the latter also has MS Office as well.


Why are you unsure about using your copy of Win7?

There are also dual boot possibilities as well.

 

[DQuaN]

Dual boot is what I would suggest. I think you may struggle getting full graphics performance within a virtual machine.

You could probably install office on Linux using Wine too.

 

[Grayfox]

Try Zorin OS.

It is built off of Ubuntu so it is easy to use, has lots of programs that can be installed by double clicking on them rather having to use the CLI.
It has a windows like UI as well which makes using it much easier.

 

[DQuaN]

I've been using Kubuntu a lot.

 

[Danoff]

Sounds like it should work! I routinely play some old DOS/Windows game on my linux box, but I run them under Dosbox, not a VM/Windows installation.

As for Office, perhaps look into OpenOffice as well. Not sure what your needs are, but OpenOffice works fine for me; I have it on both my linux box and my windows machine although the latter also has MS Office as well.


Why are you unsure about using your copy of Win7?

There are also dual boot possibilities as well.

I just don't know that I want to run Win7. I might want to put it on a different machine later, and I just think it would be an inferior operating system in general. I'd like to use linux, but office and games are the real drawback. I checked out OpenOffice pretty thoroughly about a year ago and I found it to be generally lacking in compatibility with MS office. If you get a docx file from work, opening it in openoffice is generally not going to go well, saving it in a format they can read is even worse.

Dual boot is what I would suggest. I think you may struggle getting full graphics performance within a virtual machine.

You could probably install office on Linux using Wine too.

I've tried installing office using Wine and found it to be a PITA and ultimately did not work for my version of office. How bad is the gaming graphics via VM?

 

[DQuaN]

Not sure as I've never tried it. It all depends on the hardware and how it presents itself to the VM I guess.

 

[Danoff]

Anyone here have familiarity with the concept of sharing a copy of windows across multiple linux machines through VM? I wouldn't mind dedicating my Win7 copy to a Virutal Machine if I could log in from other linux machines on the network and run win7 for those machines remotely. That would actually be a fantastic solution because I could dedicate my best copy of office to it. Does that seem like a reasonable possibility? I have gigabit LAN.

Edit:

It seems that it is possible to log into a Win7 machine remotely from linux. So if I dedicate a machine to running Win7 natively on the network I can log in remotely from other linux machines to run Win7 applications.

New question, the win7 needs to be the graphics machine that handles the games since games would be installed there. Does the linux machine need to have much graphics capability? Seems that all I'd really need to worry about is the speed with which the graphics information already processed on the Win7 machine can be sent back to linux. The linux machine could be pretty barebones graphics-wise I would think.

 

[Jump_Ace]

Good questions @Danoff If you want to have a VM available over the LAN, you'll need a computer to host it and keep it running all the time to remote into it whenever you need. It doesn't require a ton of hardware performance, mainly RAM. Perhaps your old computer could do this function? I believe you could run VirtualBox on a Linux Distro like Ubuntu or Zorin like others have mentioned.

As for your new computer, if you don't have a need to use XML in your office files, you could use Open Office with Thunderbird that has Outlook, Work, Excel equivalents. You will need to save your files as Office 2003 versions first though.

I don't have much experience with WINE, but I'd think there's support for Diablo III (or at least you can find out of it's compatible with WINE). But when I've used it in the past, I've been surprised.


Jerome

 

[Danoff]

Good questions @Danoff If you want to have a VM available over the LAN, you'll need a computer to host it and keep it running all the time to remote into it whenever you need. It doesn't require a ton of hardware performance, mainly RAM. Perhaps your old computer could do this function? I believe you could run VirtualBox on a Linux Distro like Ubuntu or Zorin like others have mentioned.

Except that I'd want to take advantage of the windows platform to run games - so it would need better hardware potentially than the other linux machines.

I'm beginning to wonder whether what I really want is a dedicated Win7 machine hosting windows apps for remote login for linux machines on the network.

Edit:

OpenNX looks like a good route for setting up the remote logins.

 

[DQuaN]

Remoting in to the Win machine will not go well with games. The network will not be able to transfer the high paced graphics anywhere near fast enough and it will lag terribly.

Why not go for a dual boot option?

 

[Danoff]

Remoting in to the Win machine will not go well with games. The network will not be able to transfer the high paced graphics anywhere near fast enough and it will lag terribly.

Why not go for a dual boot option?

I have multiple machines that need access to windows software.

 

[BobK]

Have you looked at VNC (Virtual Network Computing)? I used to use it to run my Win98/XP machine from a linux box and vice versa. There are several VNC setups, both open source and commercial. I used to use something which was called simply VNC I believe but I can't seem to find a trace of it now. Check out RealVNC, TightVNC, and UltraVNC just to name a few. Meanwhile I'll see if I can find anything on my systems.

The idea is that you run a VNC server on your Windows machine, run a VNC client on your linux box, and then the Windows' desktop is displayed on the linux machine while the linux keyboard stokes and mouse movements are sent to the Windows machine. Or vice versa, or windows-to-windows, or linux-to-linux; both clients and servers are platform-independent.

Incidentally OpenNX may not do what you think it does. It's basically a method of running the X Windows system from remote machines across a slow network. The X Windows system has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows. It's the graphical underpinnings at the bottom of all unix (including linux) GUIs. I run Windows 7 on my Windows machine, I run X Windows (specifically X Windows version 11 release 7, or X11R7) on my linux boxen. X windows was designed from the ground up for networking. If you were trying to do what you're trying to do on several linux boxes and/or BSD machines only it would be trivial to do; it's built right in with nothing to install.

All this being said, I don't think you'll be able to play Diablo satisfactorily via VNC or any other desktop-sharing system, simply because of the graphics bandwidth required; there's a reason so much graphics processing has been offloaded from the CPU to the GPU.

But Office? Yeah, no problem.

 

[Danoff]

Office apparently works with almost completely built-in software. Win7 has a remote desktop option designed for use with other windows machines. Linux apparently has created a compatibility with that (including OpenNX). So office I think is solved.

For games I think I'll need a faster connection. I did find one person who claims to have made it work:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1638643/tutorial-create-onlive-remote-streaming-setup.html

 

[Danoff]

I have decided to take it slow. I'm building my main computer as a Win7 machine and will remote login from other linux machines for the purposes of using office. That way I can take the time to figure out what it will take to get the remote gaming setup working.