A funny case of using the PC

I made a very recent decision to do this very thing, but not for any of the reasons the author outlines...<p>I use an OSX system, and run OSX in a vmware fusion VM, and do <i>all</i> of my work there. Nothing is done in the host OS. I revert to the initial, clean snapshot daily.<p>I do this for security and privacy. My web history is not wiped by the browser, but is reverted to a clean OS install. Any malware that might infect the VM is cleaned out almost immediately. Further, I can quickly wipe my &quot;system&quot; prior to travel, or other scenarios where I lose physical control of the system.<p>So at any given time, all I have is a virgin OSX system with vmware fusion on it, and a single, virgin OSX VM. Of course this implies that my work and my data all live remotely, but that has been the case for almost 15 years.

<i>&quot;I wonder about the future where the main OS of a notebook&#x2F;PC is a VM OS (something like Xen), where we could choose to boot up multiple OSes and communication&#x2F;sharing between these OS are still possible, and the VM OS doesn&#x27;t consume too much memory and CPU.&quot;</i><p>Windows 8 ships with the Hyper-V hypervisor, and provided one&#x27;s computer has a recent CPU, begins to fulfill the author&#x27;s vision.

Windows just makes it difficult for developers. Or at least difficult for developers not using microsoft stacks.<p>Why not have a bash compatible shell or at least built-in common programs like ssh and tar?? Even the &quot;power shell&quot; is pretty garbage and has a lot of legacy cmd.exe stuff in it. Where are the tabs!!!

I am in similar situation, but I have less powerful computer. So I made minimal debian setup in virtualbox, mounted my work folders as shared. When I need it I start the machine in headless mode. After few seconds I got ssh access.<p>EDIT: I just realized that I was doing the same thing as vagrant is doing, without actually knowing about it beforehand.

One awesome benefit of VMs are snapshots. Experiment as much as you like, then revert to an earlier state and start anew.

Nice to see a fellow Malaysian on the front page of HN ;)<p>Gotta give a huge recommendation for Vagrant. Spinning up a VM is dead simple, and synchronisation between VMs is more or less automatic. Not sure how well it fares in Windows though.

We do the exact same thing. Up until 5 or so years ago, we used a separate computer under each desk to run Linux on, it&#x27;s so nice to be able to run both on the same machine. It&#x27;s also portable, where previously you&#x27;d have to drag two laptops on the road with you.

Wow:<p>&quot;Internet Explorer: In Malaysia (my country), IE is the only choice if I need to perform Online Stock Trading (every brokerage use the same ActiveX app developed by the same company), and the same goes with some Online Banking.&quot;

I finally abandoned Windows as my main OS after 16 years and moved to OSX only using Windows 8 in VM for my accounting software VT Transaction+, and I haven&#x27;t looked back. I was using OSX in VM lots anyway so the time was right.

Sounds like he should try Vagrant.

And I have a very cute puppy.