VBox for Linux

[John Swisher]

Are there any downsides of using Linux in a Virtual Box on newer hardware instead of a separate computer? I recently installed VBox 6.0 on my Current laptop (I7-32GB-512SSD) and placed a couple of distros on there to trial them. The main OS on that machine is W10 which I use for work away from the office. Linux runs like 1000x faster than on the old Lenovo. Any thoughts?

[TarsolyGer]

well, if you can give more cores and more memory to the virtual machine in your new laptop than what physical processing power the old machine had, it will sure be faster.
It will be even more fast if it can use all the hardware.
I think VB is nice to try stuff out, and well, if your PC is so beefy, you can basically run Linux in Windows for your amusement, without compromising the work stuff you have on Windows.

[cleverwise]

It depends on how new the machine is as to its performance.  The latest tech can allow you to achieve close to hardware speed via passthroughs, however this must be setup in a specific way for 95%+ bare metal speed.

The biggest issue is Windows is the host OS and thus your system is more at risk for security and privacy issues.  In general if don't need Photoshop, CAD, Video processing on Windows it is better security and privacy to go the other way around with Linux as the host and Windows as the guest.

You'll gain much better virus, spyware, malware, and privacy protections.  Plus you can snapshot Windows so when a bad update or virus hits you just restore the snapshot.

[bob777]

I've been using Virtual box for years with Windoze 7 as the Host and Linux (any Distro) as the Guest...these days it's the other way around and much safer too.    I have noticed some Linux Distros don't run that well in Virtualbox...Linux Mint 19 and MX Linux are two that I had trouble with.

I have Mint Cinnamon 19.1 as the Host and Windoze 7 as the Guest...I have an i5 quad core CPU and 16GB of Ram...so I give my  Windoze 7 Virtual Machine 2 cores and 6GB of Ram.

The Virtual Machine isn't connected to the Net...if I want to use it on the Net...I'll create a Clone and use that...in this way should I get a Virus or hacked...I just delete the Clone and create another one...take about 10 mins...I don't have to Re-install the VM from scratch.