Consider this - Windows 2025 Host

[kasper]

Windows 11 has too much stuff as a host.

Linux has a steep learning curve.   Driver support dubious.

Consider Windows server 2025 as a host.

[goldeneye_007]

Been using Linux as a host since 2000. It has improved greatly since those early days.

The biggest issue is always VMware not keeping up with kernel updates so you will

have to learn to compile vmmon vmnet on occasion. I would not use Windows as a host as

it is unstable by nature and promotes its own competing hypervisor which often conflicts

with third party software.

[kasper]

'I would not use Windows as a host...'   Ok.   So all I have to do is a compile?   Seriously?

What I would like to see is benchmarks cpu/memory/video/disk on a Linux host vs a Windows server 2025 host

on a Windows 11 24h2 guest.   I am guessing Linux falls short.

[RaSystemlord]

Linux does not have a steep learning curve - it is actually much easier than Windows with all of its bugs, bad design and changes out of control. Driver support in Linux is better than in Windows, it is just different - and obvious in a windows-shop you get windows-compatible hardware - well, perhaps not always Win11-compatible hardware.

For instance, EMU sound cards and printers don't need no application software or drivers on Linux - drivers are embedded. They work straight away.

Linux is just different to Windows and needs training like any other different system. As for admin work - Linux can be set up in 2 hours with every application software and with Updates - 1 hour if you have fast internet connection. Windows takes whatever it takes when you need to search for capable software all over the net and buy them. For instance, Windows cannot open Microsoft documents after it is installed - Linux can, included in the basic install (with most distros).

I have been supporting complex Windows systems since it became a real environment for professional use, that is Windows NT 3.1. in mid-95s. Linux I have used since early 00's with various things and as a VMware host since mid 00's. 

Buying Windows Server, because workstation Windows doesn't work, is like making a deal with the devil or going to the dark side of the force.

Having said that, Windows 10 works quite alright with VMware if you have decent hardware and you are careful. Don't know nothing about no nested virtualization, though - with or without Win 11 problems. I will soon find out, if VMware will work with Intel Ultra 9 processor and Win 11.

[kasper]

Thank you for your post.   Again, I would be interested in seeing some cpu/memory/video benchmarks (Passmark, etc) on the performance of a Windows 11 guest on a Linux  and Server 2025 host.

[goldeneye_007]

I could find no independent studies with this scenario. Probably something someone should do, but

all past benchmarks that I can reference clearly show Linux performance as a host is better by a wide

margin. If you query ChatGPT on the subject you will only get Linux as the winner.

Prompts: windows guest performance under vmware liunx host vs windows host

I also ran: vmware guest os performance better on linux or windows

The second returned a dubious mention of 'minimal UX interface' so I challenged it with:

"are you sure vmware/linux UX is 'minimal'"

It then stated that they are equivalent if you use the GUI. <shrug> duh...

"

Final Verdict:

No, VMware on Linux is not minimal in UX - it's quite capable and mature. However, some quirks, manual steps, and potential compatibility issues (especially with kernel updates) make it feel less polished in some edge cases compared to Windows. So, if you're technically comfortable, VMware on Linux gives you both performance and a solid user experience.

[kasper]

FM.   I am sort of fixated on Server 2025.   I also run Ubuntu as a guest.   Give me a starting point to compare in regards to Linux.

Ubuntu or Red Hat?

[RaSystemlord]

Kasper: There is nothing wrong technically being fixated to Windows Server 2025, it is probably a decent platform. It is just that Linux is better and for free :) .

As goldeneye has commented, I agree with all those sentiments, there is that kernel thingy as a quirk for linux-vmware. Solving that requires basic Linux understanding and google ... as of late, I found the solution on this very forum with Google.

However, to get Windows itself running, requires usually much more than basic understanding and there is always something wrong. It is an unstable system, patches over patches over patches and sometimes it hits you at the face. Linux is nothing like that.

As for Linux versions - Ubuntu was really good with Unity desktop, but since it was so good but different, they had to take it away. Try-outs later, have been a disappointment. I'm now using Kubuntu - that is very nice, it is hard to say why exactly, but everything is just fine there. Obviously, Kubuntu is based on Ubuntu, but has a different user environment and different default programs. Take LTS versions, if you don't want to hassle. Those versions are good for 3-6 years (it depends) and meanwhile and after that period, they can be Upgraded to the next LTS versions. The Upgrade actually works - it can work because in Linux all the programs components are known to the system and thus can be updated and upgraded in a reliable and organized manner.

I'm also using Ubuntu Studio (it has all the creativity tools loaded as standard and has a zero-latency kernel), Puppy Linux (every now and then - there is nothing quite like Puppy Linux, a very long story) and then I use in my media center 2xVolumio (an Italian Linux for music ), and OSMC (a German Linux for videos). The latter ones run in Raspberry single board computers, 3 of them in the main media center. Those media center linuxes don't require a keyboard, mouse or screen (no screen for music linux) - you control them with computer, android or tv-remote or all of those, whichever is handy.

What I mean, if you haven't really dug into Linux, it is time now. There is no way to use Windows for most of the uses that computers are used for. Helicopter flying on Mars had a Linux operating system - well, it had to work in a reliable fashion.

[kasper]

In the words of Eddie Murphy in the movie Trading Places at the end 'Why not have both'.   Thank you everyone for your posts.   Will either do a dual boot or NUC NUC comparison.   I am a big fan of the NUC.   And KUbuntu.

[goldeneye_007]

I'll make a couple of suggestions.

1) Try flipping what you are doing. Instead of running Windows and workstation to run Linux (or dual booting) Use Linux as your host and put Windows as your guest. That way you can do all of your normal daily windows work in the VM and flip out to Linux to get more familiar with it. I run dual screens and have Windows on my right screen and Linux on my left.

Over time as I became familiar with Linux and replaced my Windows workflows I simply quit booting Windows with exception of 1 application that does not support Linux and there is no analog in Linux. That application DOES run under WINE, so technically I don't need Windows at all, but since it is critical that the application works 100% I cannot trust WINE for the job. Plus as the network admin, I need to keep my pulse on what Windows is doing as there are Windows on the desktops elsewhere.

openSUSE Forums

And finally, since Linux distros conjur up religious wars, I'll put my plug in for OpenSUSE and KDE (another holy war) which I have been using as my daily driver since 1996. Yes KDE is large, bloated, doesn't run well on inferior hardware, but it is stable and does what I want. OpenSUSE has a great control panel and software management is easy with the YaST software manager. I'm not going to say OpenSUSE is without flaws and some things can be difficult to get right (nVidia drivers and multimedia codecs come to mind) but solutions are well documented and forum support is good https://forums.opensuse.org/. If you decide to try OpenSUSE, download the Leap version, not Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is a 'rolling distro' so you'll see bugs crop up faster which at this point, you do not want.

Most of all don't make learning Linux into a mythical thing. There are guys that love to showcase their mastery and they can be annoying with their strict interpretations of how the world should be. That's fine, but it doesn't have to be the world you choose to live in. I like a GUI, with the caveat that it won't always do what you want because someone felt you didn't need that setting. That is why Linux rules, if a setting is not in the application odds are you can find what controls it somewhere in the CLI and make it do what YOU want, not what someone else decided for you.

[RaSystemlord]

As a discussion item: I have, as of late and with VMware, only used Ubuntu and lately Kubuntu, as mentioned above, and thus cannot comment on openSUSE Linux. 

I agree that there is nothing mythical learning Linux - it is just what every ICT professional needs to do, if you ask me. In Windows environment, you can always blame somebody else, and quite rightly say that uSoft messed up again ... like in 30 years of professional Windows they STILL have not been able to create a text editor which would perform well and in a predictable manner. 

In Linux, learning things may be a humbling experience, because it is always your fault, if something doesn't work. In the end, you can take the source code and do it better. Often, you can just configure everything to work better or use another way of doing it with some other application. With Puppy Linux, you can even Master your own version of it - or even use editors to change the binary files deciding how it boot up and thus create a higher security version of it.

If not obvious, there are applications in Linux, which are not very good. But taking something else, is for free and thus exploring things is easy.

The matter of having a Linux host and putting Windows only in VM, is really the way to start. In business world, this might not be ideal, but in any kind of private use, this is what I did. After all, there are not too many Windows applications that you really want. People use Android and Apple for many (some even most) things that you did on Desktop 10 years ago. That should tell everybody that you don't really need Windows for much - except on business, but even many of those business applications are WEB based and thus Windows is not a requirement (if ICT department has any sense in them when rolling out their systems).

[kasper]

For Windows server 2025 I can do a DISM and disk cleanup (2 simple steps) and cleanup

unwanted files and reduce my disk space almost back to the orginal install.

In Linux the disk just keeps growing even when I do a number of steps to remove

files and kernels and etc.   What does Linux have that will cleanup up disk space

so the size goes back to the orginal install?   Do I really need to install a 3rd party

app like Sweeper to do this?

[kasper]

Video driver support.   Got a 780M.   When I look for drivers from AMD they only have Windows.

Who is supporting the video driver for the 780M?    Same with audio.   Same with USB3/4.

So if there is a lack of direct support for drivers and the drivers come from some open software

group, I would consider that a ding?

[kasper]

My mistake.   For some reason vendors have seperate websites for OS drivers.   Strange.

Would be nice if they were all on the main driver page.

[kasper]

I started out with a 10GB LXQT guest 7 months ago.   I set the disk to non-persistant.

I upgraded using perstant.   And then reset to non-persistant.    Over time it went

from 10GB to 35GB.   I ran autoremove --purge.  I ran apt clean.   I ran rm-rf /temp/*.

I then did a vmware compact.    And still the disk was at 35GB.   What is the learning

curve I need to know to get the disk space back to the original install of roughly 10GB?

Going from 10 to 35GB with only updates and the cleanup methods I used does not cut it.

[kasper]

My mistake. on the disk space.   This appears to be a VMWare compact issue.   Need to do more DD.

[RaSystemlord]

Yes, only Compact releases the space on the physical disk. If you have any Snapshot, no space can EVER be released until you delete all Snapshots. If you think about it, that is the way how Snapshot needs to work.

Linux does not grow in an uncontrollable manner, Windows does. In Linux you can always delete not-in-use software packages semi-automatically, because Linux actually knows what are needed - Windows cannot possibly know that and doesn't even try. If not obvious, there are temp-files and user-files which are the responsibility of the user, depending on what software you have used. For instance, some software creates hidden files (with . -in front) and does not clean them. There is nothing that Linux itself can do about them. So, Linux does not stop application software to behave in a stupid fashion - the user needs to take control of the software, if it works incorrectly.

[goldeneye_007]

I would be careful deleting things in temp or /tmp. The are sometimes critical temp files running for processes that if you nuke them can cause unintended consequences (like data loss). A program that used to do that in the past was Oracle RDBMS. Linux will happily delete in-use files for you. lsof +D /path will show you what is in use.

[RaSystemlord]

I miss AT&T Unix, which might be considered the original Unix by some. It was automatically deleting "tmp" directory in reboot. Temp is for temporary and you don't need them in the next boot up - that is what Unix was teaching. 

In "Windows-temps" of typical users - they are like junk yards, something valuable and mostly just debris.

[Morc001]

You can use the command du -sm / as root to list which root folder takes how many megabytes. When you found which root folder takes the most, you can adjust the command to du -sm /var/* for example and dig down. /var/log is one suspect. /var/cache could be another and /tmp also, but not usually. I'd suggest to install Midnight Commander (mc) to easily navigate the folder structure.

[Derek Arnold]

According to this matrix updated last month, Windows Server 2025 isn't technically supported: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/315653/supported-host-operating-systems-for-wor.html

Could it work? Most likely.   Is it supported? Not yet. 

[kasper]

I have taken a Ubuntu 24.x guest that I created 8 months ago that just used Firefox.   And I set the disk to non-persistant but switched to persistant to do updates on a monthly basis.   The disk went from 8 GB to 35 GB.   So I used Clonezilla to try and reduce it.   It went from 35 to 14.   So now I want to know how on both the host and guest (more so the guest) you manage this bloat on updates?   Again, this was a system with just a web browser and it was non-persistant EXCEPT FOR UPDATES.

[RaSystemlord]

What Ubuntu version you really have? .10 versions are not LTS and they do have all kinds of problems, at times. They are more like experimental - not for a normal user. You can argue that they shouldn't have problems, but they seem to have. More importantly, there is no reason to use them, if you don't know about your reason. Use .4 (for April) versions.

Also, I wouldn't anymore use Ubuntu, I would use Kubuntu - or some people use some other versions of Ubuntu, but I don't have taste for them.

Also, what "persistant" and "non-persistant" you are talking about. And why?

If you just want a live session without installing anything, don't use *buntu" - they are not very good in that. Use Puppy Linux which is targeted for that and is lightning fast. Try it - and you understand how fast a file can be opened if there is no "unnecessary" burden involved.

[kasper]

I sort of went off topic from host to guest.   For a host, disk space usage is less important than for a guest.   There are concepts that anyone in the computer field needs to understand.   Disk persistance vs non-persistance is high on the list.   My concern is that I have a base Ubuntu 24.x guest (or host) using LXQT and Openbox.   The ONLY thing I do on it is updates.   Its been running for 8 or 9 months.   And it has quadrupled in size.   And I now for a fact because I am using a persistant and non-persistant  disk.   Torvalds came out roughly a month ago and said what are all these extra files occuring in Linux.   Its turning into a pig.   How do I cut out the fat?   Clonezilla may be one answer.

[RaSystemlord]

I'm no expert on those versions. Fat for Torvalds probably means completely something else than for ordinary people - I wouldn't refer to that.

There are many possible reasons:

• if you have .10 version, it might have some weird logging on or some other not-user-friendly feature by default
• you might have logging on in Linux, which you probably do not want
• study what your Web Browser saves and how often it cleans up, if ever
• study hidden file (.files) in your home directory. For instance some software can save every camera picture there that you ever bring to your computer, no matter where you ACTUALLY saved them
• study your not-by-default user environment, what it does
• for Kernel updates and related, check how to wipe old one out, if you are concerned with those tiny bits
• study apt-get, command for getting rid of packages that are not needed

Or just use Kubuntu 25/4.04, which probably wouldn't have any of those problem. If you just do browsing, use Puppy Linux from an USB-stick and do not save anything, when you shut down - it will prompt you, if you want to save everything that you just did (=save it as a new session - the old one still remains on the stick and you can access or load it as well).

Or use Xubuntu-distro, which is an actual light-weight delivery of *Buntu (not a hack-version).

Or use Ubuntu Studio which also has XCFE-version, if you like creativity tools.

[Derek Arnold]

Have you done any maintenance on the apt cache?  This could free up some space.

https://tecadmin.net/how-to-clear-apt-cache-and-free-up-disk-space/