Two Operating Systems active at the same time

[SirDandyIV]

Stupid but possibly fun question time!!

 

So, I've done my research and it seems that there is no way to have two or more operating systems running from one PC at the same time without some incredibly specialised hardware or Virtual Machines.

And before someone tells me to use one at a time and switch between the two or use a VM, I like a challenge and am tired of rebooting my PC every time I need to do something on Ubuntu since I need full functionality.
There are also some things that I just can't get on Ubuntu. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 drivers that aren't Open Source and/or inefficient are one of them to my knowledge. The same for Windows being Command Line shenanigans.

 

And so my question is such: How can we, the stubborn people who refuse to accept defeat, run Windows, Linux/other OS at the same time with one rig. (There is a way, it's probably just incredibly finicky and/or requires additional hardware.)

If there is anywhere on the internet that has a solution, it is here.

[Guest]

Why not just use a VM and then run both OSes on top of the VM OS? 

[SirDandyIV]

1 minute ago, IAmLamp said:

Why not just use a VM and then run both OSes on top of the VM OS? 

Honestly? Half of me wants to see it done because it has yet to be done and the other half knows that trying to fit 2/3 OSes on one screen would end badly at best.

Yes, I know I can minimise things if I need to but I tend to work better if I have everything on my screen at once. It's part of the reason why I hate having to reboot every time there's something I can't solve on one of my OSes.

[ChuckMaurice]

unRAID (see related LTT video) can do that, also some VMWare software I don't remember. But they're not free. Anyway free VM software aren't efficient.

 

You may also want to check the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update which allows to run Ubuntu software and bash natively on Windows 10.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, SirDandyIV said:

Honestly? Half of me wants to see it done because it has yet to be done and the other half knows that trying to fit 2/3 OSes on one screen would end badly at best.

Yes, I know I can minimise things if I need to but I tend to work better if I have everything on my screen at once. It's part of the reason why I hate having to reboot every time there's something I can't solve on one of my OSes.

Laptop or desktop? If desktop I would just buy a second monitor or use an ultra wide one or something along those lines. For me, that's not a problem. 

[Syntaxvgm]

5 minutes ago, SirDandyIV said:

And so my question is such: How can we, the stubborn people who refuse to accept defeat, run Windows, Linux/other OS at the same time with one rig. (There is a way, it's probably just incredibly finicky and/or requires additional hardware.)

If there is anywhere on the internet that has a solution, it is here.

Quote

So, I've done my research and it seems that there is no way to have two or more operating systems running from one PC at the same time without some incredibly specialised hardware or Virtual Machines

Fuck what else do you want? Shoot bullets without a gun? Hold the bullet in your fingers and see if you can hit the primer with something sharp ?

VMs are the perfect solution to this. Your more important OS as the base, the other on the VM. With vt-d, you can even pass through a gpu to get nbearly native performance in the VM! Say you need the GPU in windows but you want that in a VM, run Linux on your iGPU or another GPU and pass through the 970. Don't even need seperate displays, just plug both into your screen and hit the switch input button. 

If you don't wish to do that, You can just make real bootable partitions also boot in a VM, so you only need to restart to get full gpu performance. 

There are plenty of solutions involving VMs, and I'm sure there's on to fit your needs. 

[SirDandyIV]

1 minute ago, IAmLamp said:

Laptop or desktop? If desktop I would just buy a second monitor or use an ultra wide one or something along those lines. For me, that's not a problem. 

That will not solve the problem of 2 OSes. If I wanted a larger space I would have 3 monitors by now.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Fuck what else do you want? Shoot bullets without a gun? Hold the bullet in your fingers and see if you can hit the primer with something sharp ?

VMs are the perfect solution to this. Your more important OS as the base, the other on the VM. With vt-d, you can even pass through a gpu to get nbearly native performance in the VM! Say you need the GPU in windows but you want that in a VM, run Linux on your iGPU or another GPU and pass through the 970. Don't even need seperate displays, just plug both into your screen and hit the switch input button. 

If you don't wish to do that, You can just make real bootable partitions also boot in a VM, so you only need to restart to get full gpu performance. 

There are plenty of solutions involving VMs, and I'm sure there's on to fit your needs. 

Switch input button seems like the perfect solution for him in addition to the VM stuff, good idea! 

[SirDandyIV]

2 minutes ago, jldjul said:

unRAID (see related LTT video) can do that, also some VMWare software I don't remember. But they're not free. Anyway free VM software aren't efficient.

 

You may also want to check the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update which allows to run Ubuntu software and bash natively on Windows 10.

Mmm. Finicky solutions. I'll take a look into unRAID. Thanks.

[SirDandyIV]

3 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Fuck what else do you want? Shoot bullets without a gun? Hold the bullet in your fingers and see if you can hit the primer with something sharp ?

VMs are the perfect solution to this. Your more important OS as the base, the other on the VM. With vt-d, you can even pass through a gpu to get nbearly native performance in the VM! Say you need the GPU in windows but you want that in a VM, run Linux on your iGPU or another GPU and pass through the 970. Don't even need seperate displays, just plug both into your screen and hit the switch input button. 

If you don't wish to do that, You can just make real bootable partitions also boot in a VM, so you only need to restart to get full gpu performance. 

There are plenty of solutions involving VMs, and I'm sure there's on to fit your needs. 

There is very, very rarely a perfect solution to anything. Yes, you're correct. I could do that. But I specifically said Without VMs and I said that for one reason in particular. Complexity. I would much, much rather have something highly complex to set up and have it work flawlessly after that than something that will be annoying to set up and to maintain. 'Sides, who wants to stay with something simple? Not me, sadly.

[SirDandyIV]

18 minutes ago, jldjul said:

unRAID (see related LTT video) can do that, also some VMWare software I don't remember. But they're not free. Anyway free VM software aren't efficient.

 

You may also want to check the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update which allows to run Ubuntu software and bash natively on Windows 10.

Hmm, yes. unRAID will run this type of system perfectly.

Thank you, you probably just saved a few days of time with that comment.

[Syntaxvgm]

20 minutes ago, SirDandyIV said:

There is very, very rarely a perfect solution to anything. Yes, you're correct. I could do that. But I specifically said Without VMs and I said that for one reason in particular. Complexity. I would much, much rather have something highly complex to set up and have it work flawlessly after that than something that will be annoying to set up and to maintain. 'Sides, who wants to stay with something simple? Not me, sadly.

You are asking to do a complex thing and scoffing at the least complex solution 

6 minutes ago, SirDandyIV said:

Hmm, yes. unRAID will run this type of system perfectly.

Thank you, you probably just saved a few days of time with that comment.

unRAID runs VMs! 

20 minutes ago, SirDandyIV said:

But I specifically said Without VMs 

There is no way to 'run two OSs at once' without one or all of them being virtualized!  

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, jldjul said:

unRAID (see related LTT video) can do that, also some VMWare software I don't remember. But they're not free. Anyway free VM software aren't efficient.

 

You may also want to check the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update which allows to run Ubuntu software and bash natively on Windows 10.

unRAID seems a bit overkill for this type of situation 

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 hours ago, jldjul said:

You may also want to check the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update which allows to run Ubuntu software and bash natively on Windows 10.

Windows Linux Subsystem is not meant to run full Linux applications. It's only there for system administrators who enjoy using bash and core Linux commands to manage a Windows system. See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/faq. Especially this note:

Quote

Can I run ALL Linux apps in WSL?

No! WSL is a tool aimed at enabling users who need them to run Bash and core Linux command-line tools on Windows.

 

WSL does not aim to support GUI desktops or applications (e.g. Gnome, KDE, etc.)

 

Also, even though you will be able to run many popular server applications (e.g. Redis), we do not recommend WSL for server scenarios – Microsoft offers a variety of solutions for running production Ubuntu workloads in Azure, Hyper-V, and Docker.

It's like how XP Mode in Windows 7 wasn't really meant for anything other than for businesses to run their office applications that were fine in XP but not in Windows 7. You couldn't run a lot of games or any other 3D accelerated app in XP Mode.