Yes, there are still use cases for it.
The state of GPU virtualisation, for example, is a spectrum from doesn't exist/sucks to only affordable for enterprise customers.
So unless you have a second graphics card to do pass through with, if you want to use your GPU under both OSes then you almost always have to dual boot (yes, there are other options like running Linux headless, but it's not even remotely easier to set up than dual boot)
Per, Korhojoa, and my personal experience plenty of desktop CPUs simply don't have integrated GPUs. Consumer mainboards simply don't come with them at all. Consider my previous workstation CPU, top of the line a few years ago and no iGPU: https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/50...
Integrated GPUs is a feature of server mainboards so that there is something to display with for troubleshooting, but not on any retail mainboards I am aware of. It is a feature of some consumer grade GPUs designed for either budget or low-power gaming. It simply doesn't exist on all CPUs, consider the AMD 5600, 5600x and 5600g, last gen mid-range CPUs adequate for gaming and the x had a little more clock speed, and the g had an iGPU.
So you are contradicting yourself.
- buying a ready made computer from a brand --> always come with an integrated GPU. Some will be even such a small form factor you have to use an external thunderbolt connected GPU if you want to use one.
- you build your computer yourself from parts --> you decide your motherboard and CPU, if VM passthrough is something you want to do, you just buy the parts that fits your use case
- you buy a configurable prebuilt computer from an online or local vendor --> you just have to choose the right option on the configuration tool so that you get a motherboard/cpu that offers integrated GPU.
- you buy second hand and you don't have an igpu: you buy the cheapest gpu available, usually around 10 to 25$ and you have your second GPU that the host can use.
Even when you are using laptop, having 2 GPUs is really not complicated in 2024, especially with thunderbolt external GPU cases/adapters.
Bottom line: you only have one GPU if you actively choose not to have 2.
It sounds like a useful toy for those whom already enjoy playing with their computer as much as playing with the game.
That said wouldn't limiting the host to integrated graphics (or whatever you get for $25) be a substantial limitation compared to using wine/proton or dual booting?
Most people don't play game.
Most people that play game that isn't solitary or a web game just buy a playstation, xbox or Switch.
Only a relatively small fraction of people playing AAA games use computer for that. The most hardcore one and the most willing to spend money on a game Rig. And I am pretty sure most of them aren't the least interested in dual boot because they would have a desktop gaming rig and a laptop for everything else anyway. Only a tiny fraction of gamers is probably interested in dual booting. You are part of that tiny group. Fine. The nmbl tool presented in this conference do not prevent dual booting anyway so I am not even sure why people act like they should be offended because grub might be replaced someday by something else with more capabilities.
You are correct on the complexity cost and how most people, even those with nice gaming computers, just don't want to deal with more complexity than needed. Even mandating a store app that works causes a significant hit to conversion rates. EA couldn't give away Dead Space a previously successful AAA title when bundled with their store.
Whales.
https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_dual_boot_win
It doesn't make sense to ex post facto try to justify what people SHOULD do when we can look at what in fact they actually do.
The idea that the only people that play PC games are ONLY play AAA games on their souped up rigs is also a counterfactual. People play games everything from 8 year old laptops to $5000 custom built rigs with RGB everything. You are oversimplifying the universe consists of many and varied irrational individuals not spherical cows.
Dual booting is simple and suitable for nearly 100% of machines running Linux.
Wine/Proton is suitable for nearly 100% of machines running Linux. Steam has reduces this complexity to a few clicks for the majority of titles.
GPU passthrough is unsuitable for 70-80% of configurations and by dint of complexity undesirable for nearly everyone which is why virtually nobody does this.
Why would one dual boot if games work so well?
Yes. I work on Linux and play most games on Windows. Playing games on a VM is... pretty terrible.
Yes.
> there is virtually zero overhead in using VM nowadays
Not for real-time audio production. The state of audio plugins having Linux support from vendors like EastWest, Spitfire, Native Instruments, iZotope is abysmal and even Wine does not run them nowadays.
Even with a virtual machine that has pinned cores and USB pass-through of a dedicated audio interface, it practically locks you to one sample rate, any change causes crackles, try to load more than one plugin and you hear crackles. There is plenty of overhead.
One of the big problems is with the graphics cards, because the vendors block a driver functionality ( SR-IOV ) for consumer GPUs that would allow single GPU passthrough for VMs.
The alternative is to leave the system headless (reboot needed, and the VM need to run as root), or to use two graphics cards (wasting power, hardware resources, etc.), for which you also need to add an extra delay layer inside the VM for to re-send the graphics back to the screen, or to connect two wire inputs to the monitor.
While if don't dual boot you can switch completely to another OS and only use VM or remote desktop for the handful of use cases when you aren't ready yet (and then end ip abandoning them completely as well).
The experience of using a VM is not good, that's exactly why people are doing dual boot. They know what they are doing.
Keep in mind that booting takes a tiny fraction of the time today that it did in the 90s.
My original plan was to do everything in a Windows VM, but there was too much of a performance hit for some of my purposes, and VMWare doesn't allow attaching physical disks or non-encrypted VMDKs to a Windows 11 VM, so it's actually easier to have a data drive that's accessible from both OSes with dual boot than it would be with a VM.[1] I'm still disappointed about that.
[1] Using HGFS to map a host path through to the VM is not an option because of how slow that is, especially when accessing large numbers of files.
Seems the answer is yes. https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_dual_boot_win
> there is virtually zero overhead in using VM nowadays
It might be more accurate to say that if you have a fast computer with lots of resources the experience running a basic desktop experience feels perceptibly native. This means it is a great answer to running windows software that neither needs a discrete GPU nor direct access to hardware on the minority of machines that are capable enough for this to be comfortable.
In actuality laptops are more common than desktops and the majority of computers have 8GB of RAM or less. 60% all form factors 66% laptops. This just isn't enough to comfortably run both.
https://linux-hardware.org/?view=memory_size&formfactor=all
Furthermore while most Linux users are comfortable installing and running windows and Linux whereas they may or may not be familiar with virtualization.
Also probably the number one reason someone might dual boot is probably still gaming which although light years ahead of years prior still doesn't have 100% compatibility with Windows. In theory GPU passthrough is an option but in reality this is a complicated niche configuration unsuitable for the majority of use cases. Anyone who isn't happy with steam/proton/wine is probably more apt to dual boot rather than virtualize.
Do people really dual boot a lot in 2024? It was a good use case when virtualization was slow but decades after the CPU started shipping with virtualization extensions there is virtually zero overhead in using VM nowadays and it is much more convenient than rebooting and losing all your open applications just to start one on another OS.
> - it allows you to boot any other EFI application, such as memtest, or efi shell. Most UEFI firmwares doesn't have a menu to do so.
How many times in a decade are you running memtest?
Getting to UEFI firmware or booting another OS/drive is just a matter of holding one key on my thinkpad. I would just simply not buy and bad hardware that doesn't allow me to do that. Vote with you wallet damit.
I would also argue that you can perfectly have grub sitting alongside a direct boot to kernel in an UEFI setup. There are many other bootloaders than grub and users are still free to use them instead of what the distro is shipping. UEFI basically allows you to have as many bootloader as you have space on that small fat partition.