I’m currently dual booting Linux Mint and Windows. Love Linux, hate Windows. So why I am dual booting?
Because I own and use a Microsoft Zune HD.
It’s probably the best product Microsoft ever came out with. It’s so much lighter than my phone, it has a ton of my music on there, and it has an HD FM radio tuner. However, the software that runs it has never been released so there aren’t really any good options to try and manage the Zune on Linux (some people have tried, it doesn’t really work). So I keep a windows partition just so I can manage a 16 year old mp3 player and radio. That has to be the worst reason to keep a Windows partition, right?
(The reality is I would probably get rid of the Windows partition if I could, I’ve tried but something seems wrong with the BIOS on my computer idk I’m not a programmer. The Zune software is pretty janky at the point so uploading new music barely works anyway).
Sometimes I need to show off that I beat Microsoft Minesweeper on Expert in slightly less than 200 seconds.
My time is by no means competitive, the current record for Expert is less than 30 seconds. I am also aware the score could be faked by rewriting the .ini file. In fact there are numerous cheats which could simulate a win. That is why when I share this accomplishment in person, it is only with those who know I would never compromise my integrity with such dishonest behaviour.
Most people have been more impressed (if impressed at all and haven’t left by the time Windows has booted) that the drive Windows is installed on still works, since it was made in 2005 (Seagate ST3160023AS).
So I keep a windows partition just so I can manage a 16 year old mp3 player and radio. That has to be the worst reason to keep a Windows partition, right?
Yeah, and you can often assume that someone else has had that problem and was also enough of a nerd to fix it for us all.
You can run windows in docker. https://github.com/dockur/windows
That’s just a VM running atop Docker container; convenient, perhaps, but a little misleading to users who don’t understand how Docker works and might think it’s better performance-wise than a VM.
Couldn’t you just run a Windows VM instead? Something like WinBoat might be perfect for your needs. I use it to run Apple Music, but it occurs to me that I could probably run iTunes through it to sync my iPod.
Most likely yes, and if it works, this is one of the easier options (without needing to develop anything or change workflow). However, not all devices work properly with this. iPhones on iTunes are particularly difficult, as (iirc) they sometimes change device ID immediately after connecting/initializing. If you pass through a specific “USB Host Device”, an iPhone connected to a Windows VM with iTunes may not work.
If you pass through an entire USB controller, like an extra PCIe card or one from your motherboard (if it has multiple), this method should work on any USB device with any Windows tools/drivers.
If a Linux native method exists (which it does according to other comments), that is usually easier to set up than a VM with USB passthrough, but it might change the workflow.
I have an 8bitdo controller, and the software for customizing macros and updating firmware only runs on windows, and I just use a virtual machine with USB passthrough set up and it works amazingly.
You just reminded me that I wanted to look up if that works, thanks!
I just use Virtual Machine Manager, the thing is that once you add the controller to the list of passthrough devices into the Windows VM, it’ll change (spoof? create a virtual device?) into another device ID meaning you then have to add that device afterwards and then you’ll be able to use the software to change stuff. Bit finicky, and it means it’ll have to be done each time one wants to boot up said VM and change stuff. But it works.
I haven’t heard of WinBoat before, I will check that out thank you.
It’s pretty cool, albeit fairly resource-heavy. You are, after all, running a whole-ass Windows inside Linux.
However, you can shut it down when you’re not using it and you don’t run the risk of Windows fucking your boot drive.
The Zune software could be run on XP. Running that in a VM on a more modern system shouldn’t bee too difficult.
Windows XP is really lightweight. As long as your CPU supports VT-x or AMD-V, the VM will run fine.
Apparently gmtp is a reliable tool for transferring music to a Zune. Or this: https://github.com/whoozle/android-file-transfer-linux/
It’s been a few years since I tried making my Zune work on Linux, I should give it another try, thanks.
Can second mtp, works like a charm. As does the alt of a windows 7 VM with the Zune software installed, though that’s a bit more painful.
BEST reason, I miss my Zune so much, they ruled.
Zune was underrated. I had one and it was godly. I loved it more than the apple products at the time. It had so much potential!
Windows keeps trying to override grub or something. I had to reinstall grub once. Also windows keeps trying to update and reboot and fails. I have it for steam games.
I have heard about how much more aggressive Windows has became since 10 with how it likes to fuck with partitions for certain updates. If using a desktop (or laptop that has two drive bays/slots) it might be safer to just have a small drive (or large if it is games) for Windows and a large main drive for Linux. Then you can just pick which one to boot at startup via the motherboard’s hot-key. A VM makes more sense for most things, but if a dual boot is needed then two drives is safer.
You might have one installed in UEFI mode and one installed in BIOS mode. That happened to me, and windows never played nice because of it.
It really is a great little device. I believe there has to be a market out there for a Linux device similar to it, something just for music / radio / podcasts.
Yeah, seems like there needs to be a distro made for retrofitting various phones or something with those features. Maybe even using the zune hw.
There’s a walkman model which is pretty much just that which runs some flavour of android but I don’t know who they think their customer base is as the pricing is absolutely stupid. Top of the line model has gold plating and a nice 4k price tag. Also it apparently has ‘oxygen free copper’ and other audiophile bullshit, but no FM tuner.
And then there’s a ton of similar products from China but no idea which models (if any) are actually useful.
For me it’s hdmi 2.1 on AMD. Starting to really hate my decision of buying a TV as a gaming display, purely because of how much windows sucks. Just booted it up to see if my samba server was working, only to find it has no internet connection whatsoever. Wifi also connects but no internet access, but i know for a fact it’s working because both on linux and my phone it’s working fine. Already tried a bunch of troubleshooting, including resetting the adapters competely. I’m starting to suspect the mullvad vpn app somehow fucked something up, because i’m not connected to their servers right now because i haven’t added more time to my account. Internet should work if i disable the vpn app though, so idk what’s wrong there.
Dp to hdmi cables work. Even 4k 144hz works with them.
Yeah but not with all its features. Usually you have to sacrifice vrr, which is a dealbreaker for me.
Internet should work if i disable the vpn app though, so idk what’s wrong there.
I don’t suppose you enabled the kill-switch feature?
https://mullvad.net/en/help/using-mullvad-vpn-app#temporarily-blocked-internet
Yeah it turned out that lockdown mode was enabled. Disabling it fixed the issue. I guess i can’t really put the blame on windows this time lol
All the VM suggestions are good. But have you ever looked In to winboat as well?
Winboat is just a VM in a container, so the performance hit will not change/be worse
There is one app that only runs on Windows and that’s my dual boot cross to carry. I hate it so much that I am running a Windows VM and run the same app there until the lag is too much and have to boot to Window to finish the job.
You can’t just treat it as an external drive?
I have an old laptop with windows on it out of a combination of pure laziness and im in a no spend condition and need to buy a solid state drive.
Run XP on a VM? Zunes were great.
No that’s the best reason to duel boot and I absolutely love it. I’m adding it to my list of perfectly reasonable reasons to duel boot or not switch to Linux. Right next to “I need this software for work”
