Re: Improving the Contributors Guide and LilyDev

[David Kastrup]

Federico Bruni <address@hidden> writes:

> 2015-05-04 20:29 GMT+02:00 Phil Holmes <address@hidden>:
>
>> Years ago I started by (accidentally) using it as a live OS.  It's a
>> useless way of trying to use it.  I wouldn't bother to try to support it.
>
>
> I totally agree. In my experience a live OS makes sense only when you must
> fix something in the real installation

The VMs add a layer of resource management in between.  It's
particularly bad if you have VM files rather than partitions: in that
case you get two file systems on every file access.  Memory management
and CPU time management is similarly impacted.  In effect, this means
that you should be using a considerably more powerful computer than what
you'd need for native operation.  When GUIs get involved, sometimes the
layering is also noticeable.  I remember that when I was the guinea pig
for VM usage in a company I worked at, pressing Alt and releasing it
without action (and this kind of reconsideration happened a few times a
day) made the computer busy for a moment before it asked me whether
I was handicapped and it should be holding the Alt key for me.

Now since that actionless release of the Alt key often was related to
developing a different thought line to follow, this Clippy-like
distraction tended to come at the worst possible moments.

Well, at one point of time I created an own partition for my VM to fix
the file system performance problem.  And some times later I justed
booted that partition and thus got rid of the Windows layer interfering
with my work.

-- 
David Kastrup