I guess you don’t understand the benefit of putting all the shady Microsoft shit in its own dirty polluted sandbox (or individual sandboxes) where it can’t spy on anything besides the other stuff in its sandbox that is already tainted and at most it may find a way to spy on the stuff you give it implicit permission to while you do whatever work you need to do with it. Meanwhile your main OS which hopefully does at least 90% of what you actually need to do on a daily basis, and does all the stuff that is actually important to you and happens to be none of Microsoft’s business, is safely running the actual show and remains completely under your control and authority, private and spyware-free. If you can’t completely get rid of Windows from your life (and some people still feel like they can’t for whatever reason), you can at least limit your exposure massively and turn it into practically a non-issue. Compartmentalization is a very effective way of dealing with nasty untrusted software.
When you get that shit locked down tight enough you can run straight-up viruses and rootkits with no concerns at all. You can see what they do, or try to do, and when they’re finished doing it, just casually delete them. Some people do. For research. In fact it’s so common that a lot of viruses or rootkits go out of their way to try to detect that they’re on a VM and refuse to activate if they think they are, there’s a whole arms race of researchers trying to make the VM look more realistic so the virus will still trigger. Even the viruses know your VM is probably just fucking with them. Windows, thankfully, isn’t quite that bad, and programs written for it will run quite happily in a VM or other virtual environment and let you do whatever you want to do with them, quite safely and subject to your complete authority over them that a VM or other simulated environment can provide.
Complete compatibility (because you are running office on Windows natively through a virtual machine rather than a translation/compatibility layer like Wine or Proton) with any of those tricky windows-locked programs that have intentional roadblocks to disrupt normal compatibility methods.
If it wasn’t Office, Adobe, or Autodesk, I wouldn’t bother, but those 3 are enough of a pain to run via compatibility layer that a virtual machine would be preferrable.
You get the best of both worlds - you can keep all of your other programs, data, and activity off of Microsoft’s ecosystem and Windows, while still having access to crucial programs required for certain jobs or activities. The only downside is performance, because running a GPU passthrough for a virtual machine is a bit of a pain in the nuts, but that’s why I mentioned only using that solution for specialist programs that intentionally try to trip you over - use Wine or Proton for everything else.
Plus, it’s a bit defeatist to go “Fine Microsoft/Autodesk/Adobe, here’s my data” because they’re being a dick to you. Just flip them the bird and run a virtual machine or even a cracked version on the virtual machine.
No dual boot needed, can use Linux exclusive programs and have data stored outside of the VM for easy access
Able to take advantage of the performance improvements of using Linux as your daily driver compared to Windows (most notably lower memory usage)
Not barred by Windows 11’s requirements (largely irrelevant for the software you want to use this with, but it’s a factor)
Also two things, since I’m confused on if you’re playing coy or are just in a contrarian mood:
Yes, all of the functions inside the VM can be achieved with a standard Windows install. However, we are looking at this situation through the lens of a user who wants to use Linux with access to their Windows programs that throw roadblocks (AKA the original commenter of this comment train)
Regarding network security, the advantage of not using Windows as your main operating system is that you have a stable, secure baseline, without any fears of unwanted telemetry or addons included in the package (such as copilot). You can debloat windows, but you can never be truly sure that those issues won’t return in the next update or are fully disabled. With a VM that’s not running… well, it’s not running. Not connected to the internet.
No dual boot needed, can use Linux exclusive programs and have data stored outside of the VM for easy access
Yes but if you dual boot there’s no VM needed LOL
I just can’t possibly comprehend why you would prefer that when dual booting is so much simpler…
Able to take advantage of the performance improvements of using Linux as your daily driver compared to Windows (most notably lower memory usage)
So you mean to tell me running Windows inside of Linux uses less RAM than just Windows? How does that work?
Not barred by Windows 11’s requirements
I mean you can get around that using Rufus easy enough (I’m told).
we are looking at this situation through the lens of a user who wants to use Linux with access to their Windows programs
But why?
the advantage of not using Windows as your main operating system is that you have a stable, secure baseline, without any fears of unwanted telemetry or addons
I’m not sure you understand how a VM works. There’s nothing about a VM that removes telemetry or add-ons from Windows…
And who said anything about a “main operating system”? Linux can still be your “main”.
What would that solve?
It solves almost everything?
I guess you don’t understand the benefit of putting all the shady Microsoft shit in its own dirty polluted sandbox (or individual sandboxes) where it can’t spy on anything besides the other stuff in its sandbox that is already tainted and at most it may find a way to spy on the stuff you give it implicit permission to while you do whatever work you need to do with it. Meanwhile your main OS which hopefully does at least 90% of what you actually need to do on a daily basis, and does all the stuff that is actually important to you and happens to be none of Microsoft’s business, is safely running the actual show and remains completely under your control and authority, private and spyware-free. If you can’t completely get rid of Windows from your life (and some people still feel like they can’t for whatever reason), you can at least limit your exposure massively and turn it into practically a non-issue. Compartmentalization is a very effective way of dealing with nasty untrusted software.
When you get that shit locked down tight enough you can run straight-up viruses and rootkits with no concerns at all. You can see what they do, or try to do, and when they’re finished doing it, just casually delete them. Some people do. For research. In fact it’s so common that a lot of viruses or rootkits go out of their way to try to detect that they’re on a VM and refuse to activate if they think they are, there’s a whole arms race of researchers trying to make the VM look more realistic so the virus will still trigger. Even the viruses know your VM is probably just fucking with them. Windows, thankfully, isn’t quite that bad, and programs written for it will run quite happily in a VM or other virtual environment and let you do whatever you want to do with them, quite safely and subject to your complete authority over them that a VM or other simulated environment can provide.
Complete compatibility (because you are running office on Windows natively through a virtual machine rather than a translation/compatibility layer like Wine or Proton) with any of those tricky windows-locked programs that have intentional roadblocks to disrupt normal compatibility methods.
If it wasn’t Office, Adobe, or Autodesk, I wouldn’t bother, but those 3 are enough of a pain to run via compatibility layer that a virtual machine would be preferrable.
Yeah but, at that point, why not just install Windows?
You get the best of both worlds - you can keep all of your other programs, data, and activity off of Microsoft’s ecosystem and Windows, while still having access to crucial programs required for certain jobs or activities. The only downside is performance, because running a GPU passthrough for a virtual machine is a bit of a pain in the nuts, but that’s why I mentioned only using that solution for specialist programs that intentionally try to trip you over - use Wine or Proton for everything else.
Plus, it’s a bit defeatist to go “Fine Microsoft/Autodesk/Adobe, here’s my data” because they’re being a dick to you. Just flip them the bird and run a virtual machine or even a cracked version on the virtual machine.
How do you figure that? You’re just running Windows inside of Linux, along with all it’s cancer.
That goes for normal Windows.
Normal Windows
How does running it in a VM improve network security?
Normal Windows 1 more time.
All the things you can do in a VM you can do running Windows normally.
Man, you must be fun at parties.
Also two things, since I’m confused on if you’re playing coy or are just in a contrarian mood:
Yes, all of the functions inside the VM can be achieved with a standard Windows install. However, we are looking at this situation through the lens of a user who wants to use Linux with access to their Windows programs that throw roadblocks (AKA the original commenter of this comment train)
Regarding network security, the advantage of not using Windows as your main operating system is that you have a stable, secure baseline, without any fears of unwanted telemetry or addons included in the package (such as copilot). You can debloat windows, but you can never be truly sure that those issues won’t return in the next update or are fully disabled. With a VM that’s not running… well, it’s not running. Not connected to the internet.
Man you must recycle jokes at parties.
Yes but if you dual boot there’s no VM needed LOL
I just can’t possibly comprehend why you would prefer that when dual booting is so much simpler…
So you mean to tell me running Windows inside of Linux uses less RAM than just Windows? How does that work?
I mean you can get around that using Rufus easy enough (I’m told).
But why?
I’m not sure you understand how a VM works. There’s nothing about a VM that removes telemetry or add-ons from Windows…
And who said anything about a “main operating system”? Linux can still be your “main”.
You can restrict network access to the VM and still do normal network stuff on the host machine, for one thing.
You can restrict access to your entire network.
…what? How are you going to do any modern day work on the host machine with no Internet access? Are you going to air gap your windows machine?
…what? How are you going to do work in the VM with no internet access?