Warning to the users of micro$oft product

[Granger]

You should be able to hand the only GPU card into the Windows VM, trick for doing it with only one card is to have a second VM (where you hand the GPU in also) that contains your linux desktop - only one can run at a time though and you need another machine for the initial setup (so you can shell into the then headless bare-metal system containing the host), the boot into the Windows VM can be scripted (terminate the linux VM, spin up windows VM, wait for it to 'poweroff' and then restart the linux one) to be initiated from the linux vm.

Like running everything under a hypervisor? Sure that's an option, but as you said only one can run at a time. It's just easier to have a separate Windows disk for games.

You can only run one that fully occupies the GPU, you have no limits on what you run in the background (to shell into, or pull out with remote X).

Would love to be able to run games in VirtualBox, but alas need to keep a Windows SSD just for playing literally 3 games...

ZFS on the host, repurpose the SSD as L2ARC, ZVOL with NTFS on it handed into the Windows VM - works nicely (given you have enough RAM in the machine). Have a clone with a 'normal' virtualized gfx card in case you just want to RDP into it from your linux desktop so you can run unaccelerated stuff in parallel.

[romovs]

I am not entirely sure what you mean.
It's not possible to have a GPU pass-through using a single GPU to a Windows guest on a Linux host, or any other guest/host combination for that matter, using a tier 2 hypervisor like VirtualBox.
With tier 1 hypervisors it's only possible if you completely shutdown one the guest, then the second one can use the GPU (unless there were some advances in that area in the recent years that I am not aware of). It's just easier to reboot to Windows each instead of maintaining such setup.

[shubla]

I am not entirely sure what you mean.
It's not possible to have a GPU pass-through using a single GPU to a Windows guest on a Linux host, or any other guest/host combination for that matter, using a tier 2 hypervisor like VirtualBox.
With tier 1 hypervisors it's only possible if you completely shutdown one the guest, then the second one can use the GPU (unless there were some advances in that area in the recent years that I am not aware of). It's just easier to reboot to Windows each instead of maintaining such setup.

I wonder if you could use CPU's integrated graphics for linux and then the external GPU for VM?
Technically its two gpus I guess.

[Granger]

I wonder if you could use CPU's integrated graphics for linux and then the external GPU for VM?
Technically its two gpus I guess.

You can do that, but then you have to switch the signal to the screen at the cable level.

With tier 1 hypervisors it's only possible if you completely shutdown one the guest, then the second one can use the GPU (unless there were some advances in that area in the recent years that I am not aware of). It's just easier to reboot to Windows each instead of maintaining such setup.

Suggested configuration is with tier 1 hypervisor. Sure you can just boot bare-metal into windows, but having it contained in a VM has the upside that MS - when deciding to be 'helpful' (by updating MBR, formatting all drives that it can't read at the first try, ...) next time - can't kill your system/data.

[MagicManICT]

Gaming is pretty much why I don't run Linux full time. When I do want to boot to Linux, I do it off a USB device and don't mount the internal hard drives.

But Granger is right. Microsoft can do whatever they want to their proprietary software standards. This isn't the first time it's disrupted a Linux install for anyone. You don't necessarily need a second computer, but a second drive is highly recommended as a minimum. That, at least, should be affordable. If you need access between both drives, then use a USB or network device for storage.

[Zampfeo]

Nowadays Windows is pretty reliable, so aside from a webserver and Tails to look at the d@rkw3bz I never need or have the desire to use linux.

[MagicManICT]

Back end server development... a lot of companies are using a managed Linux product over Microsoft because of a lot of the security advantages.

Windows is solid. There are issues, but everyone system has them. It's just a matter of picking a choosing which daemons you want to deal with. (pun intended)

[shubla]

Apparently the HDD issues were not caused by windows updating, but instead, now windows renders the NTFS completely unmountable, until a command is executed that fixes the issue, and this command must be executed after each time Windows is started up.

Im pretty sure that the sole purpose of this update is to make it more difficult to dual boot.