Hello,

I'm struggling to come to a decision. In the past I've had my system dual booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu, however I always come back to just a clean Windows installation because I get sick of rebooting my machine to switch to a Windows program or the partitions start becoming a pain. Now I want to switch back to Ubuntu, but I can't make the move 100% (because I really want to keep Visual Studio + Visual Assist and my Windows games although but I don't use the games much).

So, I have a few options;
1) Dual boot with Windows 7 and Ubuntu again (although this time I'd like to do it on separate drives, not partitioned, how difficult is it to set this up?)
2) Install Ubuntu and use VirtualBox to run Windows (how will VS react to this? bad idea for games I assume?)
3) I'm looking at building a dedicated server for media sharing and some other experiments anyway, should I simply use 2 different machines?

Do you guys have any suggestions that might help me choose? Another option? Had problems with one of the above I should know about?

Thanks for any advice/warnings

P.S. I'm not set on Ubuntu either, so if you have any suggestions for another distro they're appreciated too!

Bad idea for games, performance will suffer. I'm not sure exactly how Visual Studio will react, but it'll be slower too.

I figured performance would be a big problem. I guess VM is out of the question then as Windows is my main development target so debugging through VM doesn't seem like it will be a great idea.

That entirely depends on if you want to pay for another machine and don't mind getting up and moving from one to another.

If you do use two different machines, and they're nearby (as in you can sit in a chair and see both their screens at the same time), you may want to look into Synergy (depending on your workflow), which allows you to seamlessly share a mouse and keyboard between the two.

Actually they would be at the same workstation, hooked up to the same monitors (I figure I'll have one switch between 2nd screen and the server). I've seen synergy before actually, I was looking at it for my laptop/HDTV (a laptop which I no longer have ).

Inbetweenie option: Wubi.

I've tried this before too, it seemed pretty easy to install, which is a plus. Are there any performance issues with running Ubuntu this way? (actually, Ubuntu is the one I'm less concerned about performance-wise so this might be the way I go) I assume I can install it on an independent drive?

Thanks for the answers so far

If I remember correctly, it still requires a reboot to switch to Windows, right? It's not an emulation?

I'm tempted to go that route again, but I know the constant rebooting is going to drive me up the wall. Maybe I'll just have to bite the bullet and switch IDEs. Is there anything out there like Visual Assist X for other IDEs? (VAX is about the only reason I'm using VS still) I mainly use it for the better auto-complete and syntax colouring. Searching by symbol/reference is nice too.

I remember trying a VM solution for my Mac and older version of windows it didn't seem slow. The VM is supported at the hardware level and it's probably in the range of 80% as fast as native performance. What i did run into was virtual drivers for the GPU, games didn't like it.. I suggest giving the VM a try it doesn't hurt anything and u can always duo-boot if worse case..