this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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What you're asking is if you can run the existing Linux Mint on your drive within Windows running on the same drive?
It may be feasible if VirtualBox or VMWare are able to access/mount the existing Linux partition as if its a virtual drive, and boot the OS but its likely to be difficult. The main issue is that windows does not easily mount Linux partitions. It is also an edge case use for most users so there will likely not be much guidance on how to achieve this easily.
It might work more easily the opposite way round - boot Linux and mount Windows within Virtualbox but is not likely to be straightforward. Windows may be less flexible about being booted into a virtual machine with totally different hardware.
All this may be overkill to the problems you're trying to solve. You can mount the existing NTFS Windows drive within Linux Mint to access all your windows files without any virtualization. But I'm not clear what "settings" you're looking at when you boot back in to windows? That seems to be the stumbling block. Is is specific software / tools you're trying to migrate settings for?
Another approach may be to launch windows, create a new linux Mint VM in Virtualbox, share a folder between Linux VM and Windows host, create whatever settings you're trying to migrate in your VM Linux Mint, and when happy copy the home folder / settings folders into the shared folder. Then boot your PC into linux, mount the windows drive and pick up the settings files from the shared folder to migrate into your main Mint system. But whether that is even worth doing depends on what you're trying to migrate.
Yes, exactly this. It used to be possible with live usb keys years ago, where you could boot the key normally and have a persistent live disc, but there was a Windows tool that would virtualise the key, letting you access the persistent disc from within Windows.
The reason I want to do it is for programs like Thunderbird, where you have to export your settings, email, etc. to be able to import them on the other OS. As far as I'm aware, this can't be done by just copying files, you have to export them first.
I have memory issues, so I often forget about a program until I need to use it, and if I'm already in Mint, it means that I have to stop what I'm doing and reboot, and then lose track of what I was doing in Mint. If I can access both OS at the same time, like with a virtual machine guest and host, I can just grab whatever I need until I've got everything transferred over.