[mdlug-newbie] Install Help

[Robert Citek]

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 9:38 AM,  <list1c30fe42 at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Ron, Robert, Gary,
>
>> Easy enough to do.  In fact, I have most of my machines configured to
>> mutli-boot.  ...
>> And for the casual user there are some excellent, safer alternatives,
>> such as installing using wubi or installing in a virtual machine or
>> installing on an external drive.
>
> Be aware that wubi and virtual machines tradeoff speed for isolation.
> In my experience a VMWare (and reportedly xen) slow performance ~4x.
> Wubi is supposed to be better optimized for ubuntu.

Wubi is native speed as it is an actual installation.  From the
wikipedia page[1]:

"It is not a virtual machine, but rather, it creates a stand-alone
installation within a loopmounted device, also known as a disk image,
like Topologilinux does. It is not a Linux distribution of its own,
but rather an installer for Ubuntu."

As for virtualization, in my experience with VMWare and VirtualBox, I
get near-native performance on newer hardware (last 3 years).  But
then my setup has always been with a Linux guest on either Windows or
Linux hosts.  I have not run a Windows guest in several years, and
yes, back then, Windows as a guest was at least 4x slower than native
speeds.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(Ubuntu_installer)

Regards,
- Robert