# Install Linux in a Windows 10 Virtual Machine?



## xkm1948 (Apr 3, 2016)

What is a good virtual machine software I can use to setup a Linux environment? I am having too much trouble dual booting Mint with my Windows 10. Is there a quick way to setup up VM for Linux?


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## Kursah (Apr 3, 2016)

Windows 8+ uses Hyper-V as an installable feature in add/remove features. Works great overall. The issue with Hyper-V is it won't accelerate the Linux GUI's because it doesn't have access to your GPU for that. This can result in a semi-suggish UI which may or may not be an issue for you...adding more cores seems to help many. I was able to deal with it for some lab/network fun though...so ymmv. Depending on what you need, you could always change the GUI to one that doesn't need acceleration, or instead of using the Hyper-V console you could use VNC to remote over your network to your VM in a roundabout way. Good for networking experience, a pain in the ass if you don't want networking experience...not sure where you lie in that matter.

Otherwise I think VirtualBox would be a good option, along with VMware. 

What kind of issues are you having dual booting 10 and Linux? I've had 0 issues with Debian and Ubuntu. Haven't tried Mint tho. I was dual booting on my main rig until I replaced the SSD and have been dual booting on my laptop with 10 from day one.

Maybe you can expand on what your dual boot issue is and we can go from there? Virtualization might or might not be the answer depending on what you need the Linux installation for. Hyper-V would be the fastest IMHO... install, create new, type-1 VHD, load Mint ISO to DVD, boot, install, and go. I haven't tried Mint in Hyper-V in some time...but I still have a couple of Ubuntu 15 VM's I fire up from time to time. But with the other options available, you might be better off if you find you'll be using VM's of Linux more than anything else and want to stick with the 3d accelerated GUI's. Though I do believe MS might actually fix this and allow acceleration eventually. 

TL;DR - I think you should diag why you can't dual boot, virtualization might be more work than you want to put into it depending on the virtualization option you choose.


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## xkm1948 (Apr 3, 2016)

Driver issues with Fury X. Always ends up freezing the system right after installation. I know AMD doesn't provide the best Linux driver support. I have plenty processor power to power two to three VM and I really do not want to deal with AMD's linux driver any more.


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## Kursah (Apr 3, 2016)

You have more than enough processor power to power half a dozen VM's. I run 4+ VM's on my laptop a Dell 3540 with an i4200u without issues. My server (see sys specs... just a 4790K/Z87 build..) handles 6 right now with room to spare. They're a mix of Server 2012, Windows 8, Ubuntu, MineOS Turnkey Linux, Ubuntu Server, and pfSense VM's.

I have no experience with Fury X and Linux so ya I'll be of no help there...my Dell's old H8850M (R265x) works well enough but is by no means powerful or new. 

Well, since Hyper-V is an installable feature on your OS, why not install it and try? Make sure you have Virtualization enabled in CPU Features in your UEFI, also if you see anything related to Intel VT, enable that too if your board supports it. There's plenty of guides to creating a new VM in Hyper-V, and the newer version in Windows 10 and Server 2016 is pretty damn solid in my experience. If you don't like Hyper-V for what you need, simply delete the VM, uninstall the feature, delete the VHD (you'll have to manually locate and delete...easy enough tho) and try a different virtualization solution.


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## GoldenX (Apr 3, 2016)

You should try a distro with more recent free/open radeonsi drivers, avoid using the official ones, they are a pos at least until AMD finishes their Radeon Pro drivers.
Arch or Fedora are good examples, or a PPA that keeps them updated in Ubuntu/Mint.


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## xkm1948 (Apr 3, 2016)

I originally planned to use the FuryX's 4096SP for protein modelling. Turns out the driver is really a giant paint in the rear.  None of my current protein modeling software support my FuryX. For those that do have beta support it will usually result in a complete crash or freeze during a very important job. So as of now I have given up the idea of dual booting Linux and utilize the graphic power for my job. Instead I plan to have several VM Linux running under Windows 10. 

I will try out the Hyper-V and see how it goes from there.


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## Aquinus (Jun 11, 2016)

xkm1948 said:


> Driver issues with Fury X. Always ends up freezing the system right after installation. I know AMD doesn't provide the best Linux driver support. I have plenty processor power to power two to three VM and I really do not want to deal with AMD's linux driver any more.


Open source radeon drivers has nothing to do with AMD's driver support because most Linux distros won't install restricted drivers from the get go. You'll need to start in recovery mode, uninstall any fglrx or open source Radeon drivers and install fglrx from the package on their website. You'll want to build the driver as well, not use a pre-compiled deb. I personally haven't tried Mint though. I suggest going with Ubuntu as an alternative that I know works fairly well with my GPU.

This might be an older article but the manual installation method is still valid. It's what I personally do and I suggest that you use it as well.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/B...pstream_drivers_directly_from_AMD.27s_website

With that said, my Ubuntu install is acting up. I'm thinking about doing a clean install since upgrading from 14.04 LTS to 15.10 seemed to cause some weird behavior.


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## m0nt3 (Jun 11, 2016)

Catalyst drivers have been depracted and are no longer supported in Ubuntu 16.04. AMD is currently under a complete driver re-write and OpenCL is still being worked on. They are using a new hybrid driver called AMDGPU-Pro while just AMDGPU is the new opensource driver. If you were using an older distro that may explain the issue aftre install. 

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDGPU-PRO-Beta-Driver-for-Vulkan-Release-Notes.aspx

There is a download link to the new hybrid beta driver, on Ubuntu install is easy, just open directory in terminal and sudo ./amdgpu-pro-install and it will configure the drivers and install hte deb files. (ubuntu is currently the only official suuported distro.)


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