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Not everyone has multiple desktop computers at home, especially powerful ones. (With an Apple device to top it up.)

But hardware is more affordable than ever (unless you want a really powerful GPU). What's worse is that you have to separate the tasks between OSes, you can't easily have a default computer for everything, with everything relevant locally available. It's fine if you keep Windows for gaming, and want gaming to be explicitly separate. It's harder if you need Windows for graphics / video, or for CAD/CAM, or for Office. Having important related bits and software on another box may be a hassle.



Why do you need multiple computers when you can have multiboot and use one computer to run different OSes?


Cause it's not fun having to reboot every time you want to run a Windows program, especially if it means dealing with Windows nagging.


It's actually a pretty good thing to compartmentalize your computer. I use it to reduce procrastination.

Put all your fun things on one OS (or user account), and all your business stuff on another (possibly blocking distractions via hosts or firewall rules); and you've added a bunch of friction to switching from work to play. Not that it can't be done, but it needs to be a deliberate choice and you can't just bounce between them.


I've found that this only works in very specific circumstances. If you have any flexibility to your work schedule (which is a lot more common nowadays with any amount of remote work) this becomes massively inconvenient, as every small context switch means reseting your current system state (eg closing your dev tools).

I don't really have a set work schedule, so it's normal for me to jump between a work context and a play context. It's much easier to do by very rarely rebooting my computer (once or twice a month), so I can always pick up where I left off. The regularly scheduled update meetings do a good enough job of keeping procrastination in check.


Better to quit playing video games altogether


If you're careful with how you handle the ESP and other shared drives on Linux's side, I found it reasonably ergonomic to suspend to disk, rather than hard shut down, when switching between OSes.

At least back when win10 was new, Proton is good enough that I haven't needed Windows in a good few years.


I can live with this if I occasionally want to play so-called “AAA” games. I don’t use Windows for anything else.


In a way, it's worse the less frequently you want to play, cause it means you'll have to wait for Windows updates every time. But it works.


Author said he was using KVM switch, hence multiple computers. Also you can't install macOS on a PC. Also you might need switching between OS in real time and often. Just some thoughts.


This is very true, most of my rescues are older laptops that said were “broke”. I offered to help figure them out what was broke because I hate calling something obsolete when I can usually throw linux on it and bring it back to like. 2 of them just need an OS install, and 2 needed a new SSD. All the owners said “I was looking for an excuse to get a new laptop anyway” so I took them off their hands.




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