I’m currently dual booting Linux Mint and Windows. Love Linux, hate Windows. So why I am dual booting?
Because I own and use a Microsoft Zune HD.
It’s probably the best product Microsoft ever came out with. It’s so much lighter than my phone, it has a ton of my music on there, and it has an HD FM radio tuner. However, the software that runs it has never been released so there aren’t really any good options to try and manage the Zune on Linux (some people have tried, it doesn’t really work). So I keep a windows partition just so I can manage a 16 year old mp3 player and radio. That has to be the worst reason to keep a Windows partition, right?
(The reality is I would probably get rid of the Windows partition if I could, I’ve tried but something seems wrong with the BIOS on my computer idk I’m not a programmer. The Zune software is pretty janky at the point so uploading new music barely works anyway).
So I keep a windows partition just so I can manage a 16 year old mp3 player and radio. That has to be the worst reason to keep a Windows partition, right?
Yeah, and you can often assume that someone else has had that problem and was also enough of a nerd to fix it for us all.
Apparently gmtp is a reliable tool for transferring music to a Zune. Or this: https://github.com/whoozle/android-file-transfer-linux/
It’s been a few years since I tried making my Zune work on Linux, I should give it another try, thanks.
Can second mtp, works like a charm. As does the alt of a windows 7 VM with the Zune software installed, though that’s a bit more painful.
You can run windows in docker. https://github.com/dockur/windows
That’s just a VM running atop Docker container; convenient, perhaps, but a little misleading to users who don’t understand how Docker works and might think it’s better performance-wise than a VM.
You dont want to use windows in a vm to talk to externally connected devices or update them…ask me how I know
Bricked my favorite mouse doing this firmware upgrade for it on linux with a win 10 vm. I was sad but after a few days amazingly, the mfg sent me a custom program to reset the mouse, and it was windows only, had to use a friends pc to do it.
And I did it using usb pass through. I would not trust it again.
Sounds like a freak accident rather than the fault of the VM.
I literally use a GPU for passthrough on my Windows 10 (and macOS) VM; PCIe is a much more complex protocol and much easier to F up than USB.
I’ve used my iPhone many times through Windows and been fine, as well as whole USB keyboards and mice (just simple ones); I think I might have even updated an iOS device once, though I can’t remember if I actually did. I’ve also used an iPod Nano 7th through an 11 LTSC VM before.
I could see some things being a little finicky, but simply managing a Zune with a VM probably causes no issues. It’s probably been eons since it got a firmware upgrade anyway.
How weird! I ran two Windows VMs with USB and GPU passthrough as my work and gaming daily drivers for about six years. Now I run Mint and Bazzite with the same setup. I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t have issues, both Windows and VM related, but I never saw one even vaguely like that.
Well, I was using virtual box as ive never used anything else, so maybe thats why. Or the mouse firmware updater was just bad.
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I’ve done that plenty of times with phones and ham radio junk
Zune was underrated. I had one and it was godly. I loved it more than the apple products at the time. It had so much potential!
Windows keeps trying to override grub or something. I had to reinstall grub once. Also windows keeps trying to update and reboot and fails. I have it for steam games.
It really is a great little device. I believe there has to be a market out there for a Linux device similar to it, something just for music / radio / podcasts.
How does nothing like this exist but open source?? I guess because everyone uses their stupid phone now, but i love having separate devices.
Rockbox is the open-source.
You could look into devices supported by Rockbox, and the features of that firmware. I’m guessing it can sync files from Linux.
You might have one installed in UEFI mode and one installed in BIOS mode. That happened to me, and windows never played nice because of it.
I have heard about how much more aggressive Windows has became since 10 with how it likes to fuck with partitions for certain updates. If using a desktop (or laptop that has two drive bays/slots) it might be safer to just have a small drive (or large if it is games) for Windows and a large main drive for Linux. Then you can just pick which one to boot at startup via the motherboard’s hot-key. A VM makes more sense for most things, but if a dual boot is needed then two drives is safer.
I wonder who at m$ is in charge of the “make windows fuck up all other OSs present” department. Probably makes 800k/yr.
BEST reason, I miss my Zune so much, they ruled.
Would a VM not work? Seems like the perfect use case for a VM.
Sometimes I need to show off that I beat Microsoft Minesweeper on Expert in slightly less than 200 seconds.
My time is by no means competitive, the current record for Expert is less than 30 seconds. I am also aware the score could be faked by rewriting the .ini file. In fact there are numerous cheats which could simulate a win. That is why when I share this accomplishment in person, it is only with those who know I would never compromise my integrity with such dishonest behaviour.
Most people have been more impressed (if impressed at all and haven’t left by the time Windows has booted) that the drive Windows is installed on still works, since it was made in 2005 (Seagate ST3160023AS).
For me it’s hdmi 2.1 on AMD. Starting to really hate my decision of buying a TV as a gaming display, purely because of how much windows sucks. Just booted it up to see if my samba server was working, only to find it has no internet connection whatsoever. Wifi also connects but no internet access, but i know for a fact it’s working because both on linux and my phone it’s working fine. Already tried a bunch of troubleshooting, including resetting the adapters competely. I’m starting to suspect the mullvad vpn app somehow fucked something up, because i’m not connected to their servers right now because i haven’t added more time to my account. Internet should work if i disable the vpn app though, so idk what’s wrong there.
Dp to hdmi cables work. Even 4k 144hz works with them.
Yeah but not with all its features. Usually you have to sacrifice vrr, which is a dealbreaker for me.
Not sure if there’s a difference but I have a steam deck connected to a 2.1 capable dock and it works even with VRR (although it sporadically forgets that VRR is a thing and I have to reboot the TV)
I don’t know what refreshrate you’re using, but from my understanding if you go above 4k60hz it doesn’t run in full rgb colorspace anymore, because the amd drivers only support up to hdmi 2.0, so even when the hardware supports it, hdmi 2.1 bandwidth can’t be used.
My only reason to dualboot Windows is I own two Xbox controllers that randomly decide, from time to time, that they need to be updated and will refuse to connect to Linux otherwise.
It annoys me to no end that they can’t be updated on linux
The new Steam Controller is gonna go CRAZY once it comes out!!! Nahhh, screw Microsoft.
All the VM suggestions are good. But have you ever looked In to winboat as well?
Winboat is just a VM in a container, so the performance hit will not change/be worse
You can’t just treat it as an external drive?
Try Winboat. If your needs don’t require GPU acceleration, Winboat is flawless.
Thanks - I’ve seen Winboat mentioned several times in the comments, I’m going to try that first.
You really can’t run it in Bottles, or a VM of Windows? I’ve managed the occasional peripheral using a VM.
Run XP on a VM? Zunes were great.
Well I get why you stick to a hardware device you like… but honestly that’s 15 years old. You can get something better and cheaper delivered to your door tomorrow.
I personally went down a similar path while discovering https://www.rockbox.org/ was still a thing, looking for old iPod or Archos I could refurbish, checking 2nd hand market, etc. As much as it pains me to say, unless you are a collector it’s not “worth” it. You can get something ridiculously smaller, with more memory, more features, etc for the price of a meal.
IMHO it’s better to get rid of Windows by purchasing new hardware that is genuinely interroperable by supporting standards.
Ideally you’d check something like https://www.hanselman.com/blog/how-to-update-the-firmware-on-your-zune-without-microsoft-dammit but it might be more work than you want to put it. Maybe your local HackerSpace could help though.
My point finally is that freedom is quite important and feeling trapped daily is not worth ~$50.
