Yet another linux distro advice question (lemmy.ca)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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16gb ram. nvida GTX1650. Triple monitors

want to run existing windows 10 installation in VM, with write access. This is mostly for tax software.

plan is new SSD drive. Make 2 partitions for windows, with backup to both. Let it be C: drive? Then reformat PCIe M2 drive for linux.

I only care about the VM not FUBARing the windows installation, even if I have a 2nd backup of it.

I play one game that has a linux version: beyond all reason.

I've used debian/ubuntu based linux before. I don't need/want to highly customize performance/features. Just working out of box.

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

You're overcomplicating things.

If you have an existing Win10 install, just format the new SSD for whatever distro, install, and set the boot target for the new SSD drive.

Then run Linux for a bit, make sure everything works, and make an image of the already existing Win10 partition to run in a VM.

Much simpler.

Also: almost all tax software runs in a browser now. If not then it will run under Wine or Proton. I think you have less to worry about than you think.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

thank you. Don't like making web account for tax data.

and make an image of the already existing Win10 partition to run in a VM.

can image make changes to itself when running?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

You just "snapshot" the existing disk and run it in a VM like VirtualBox or something. Then that new disk image works as the "new" disk for the VM.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I've been running a W10 VirtualBox VM - Linux Mint on a dedicated raw SSD without any problems at all. It's been years, but I remember it was a PITA to set up initially. Looking at the docs, it seems to be easier now.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Any distro will work once you install Nvidia drivers.

For Fedora and Ubuntu you can do it from the software center application.

If you go with Fedora you want to also look up how to install proprietary media codecs. That's the one other thing you need to do after installation. Ubuntu has them built-in.

this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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