How to set up a new system for audio production AND general PC use

[robotmonkey]

By using a Virtual machine and/or sandboxing you won't even really need to use an anti-virus as well which will slow your machine down.

That's not completely true. You should have a decent AV in both your physical machine and also in your virtual machine. There are many kinds of threats that can get in even if you are really careful and only visit "respectable" sites.

Of course, with VM you can mitigate some of that by always resetting your machine to a previous checkpoint. But if you are using your VM as you would use your regular computer over long time, then decent AV is a must.

[codec_spurt]

yeah

[robotmonkey]

But really, unless you are putting on different OS's, say Linux and Windows, then it's more hassle than it's worth.

If you were doing development in Linux and wanted (or needed) to use that one very same computer for general purposes (including audio) - it would be the way to go.

But for an 'audio production' machine and a 'surfing the web' machine? Nah, not really.

There is nothing special about audio production, it's just general computing, just like surfing the web or checking a spreadsheet.

Getting a VM going is a piece of cake and not much hassle at all. The point is to keep your DAW machine completely clean from all kinds of garbage building up, that will inevitably happen if you do all your general computing and internet surfing in the same machine. Also testing plugins and such.

Like I said in the first post, I have kept my internet stuff and testing or trying out software and such in separate VM's. This has kept my DAW super clean and stable for years.

There's probably no need to be super anal about it and keep everything separate. I'll do my office tasks, graphics and photo editing and gaming in the same machine. But again - my system has been pretty much the same for many years without any garbage buildup because all the testing and internet stuff is on VM's.

[robotmonkey]

...

3) Virtual Machines run like other programs - in their own windows. You can make them full screen or run windowed. It's up to you and it's easy to switch. You can also easily copy files between your VM's and host machine.

...

Just be careful when setting up network drives or shared drives when you make a Virtual Machine. It's best not to do this as a matter of course, but only switch these features on as needed. Will only take a few minutes.

Any viruses or malware can easily spread across other drives if this is kept on all the time.

In VirtualBox the easiest and safest way is to use shared folders which are temporary.

[codec_spurt]

no

[Meffy]

Good points. I touched on the driver issue — not being able to access some devices — but just in a general way. This is the main problem I've run into using VB, and why I use it these days only to run Ubuntu and Windows at the same time. (When it comes to command-line operations Linux/Unix like, totally rule.)

Forgot to mention I do run one other VM manager (is that the right term?): Parallels. But that runs only on top of a MacOS host system so wouldn't apply here.

[codec_spurt]

so wrong

[Meffy]

OT: There's a horseshoe nailed above my house's front door, but it's there to remind me of the horse that wore it, long decades ago. The shamrock distlefink hex sign above it is to remind me of my mother, not in hopes it or the horseshoe will bring good luck (it hasn't yet, not that I've noticed).

[ataribravo]

Wow codec_spurt, that was quite a dissertation! A lot of info to digest, but I guess the last paragraph sums it up. Thanks for the time and effort to pass on all that knowledge.