On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 02:20:12PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 10 May 2013 10:31, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
That said, he'll still be exposed to Linux as it's on other computers in the house.
My wife won't use Linux; and it has to be Excel because that's what she's using on the accountancy course that she's on.
So the laptop dual-boots. Mostly its in Linux because it boots quicker and just works, where the Windows install has done it's usual trick of gradually slowing down to treacle speed. So she boots into Windows when she has to, but gets by on Linux the rest of the time. By which I mean that she has no problems doing anything she needs on Linux but the option for Windows is there in case she needs it, which she hasn't in the last year or so.
Not that she'd admit it... :-)
There's a lot to be said for dual-boot. There's no need to be afraid of Linux when Windows is there when needed, and all it means is rebooting the PC. Rebooting is just enough hassle that you don't bother unless you need to, and you quickly realise that you don't need to as much as you expect.
If the machine is good enough then I prefer VirtualBox running Windows as a guest. It's easy to share files and such then. I have mine set up so that most of what I do in Windows ends up in a sub-directory of my Linux home directory. In addition you can cut/paste from host to guest.
My wife does this on her laptop too, so she can use 'real' Word, Excel etc. on files which live in her home Linux directory.