Is it possible to use Windows 11 and MAC OS duel boot VE in my situation

[Therock]

Thanks in advance to anyone who has time to respond. Im new to all this.
I wanted to build a dual boot system with windows for gaming and work and MAC OS for music production, video editing and photo editing. So I purchased the following and built my PC - Asus tuf gaming x570, ryzen 9 5900x, 32gb ram, 2x nvme drives 1000gb each, 6800xt graphics card. I was going to install windows on one drive and mac OS open core on the other, but then I heard of PROXmox!! In the situation above, upgrades and windows killing the mac os drive is a concern, so VE becomes appealing.

I am not that interested in using both operating systems at the same time, I only have one GPU that has support from both windows and MAC OS. Can I use proxmox to create a PC that can duel boot in to either MAC OS or Windows on start up and use the same GPU?

I am also not too worried about logging in or gaming remotely at the moment, this PC desktop is for home and work use, is proxmox a good option for me or should I go back to the original plan of dual boot?

Any advice on what the best way to acheive my goals are would be much appreciatied. I have read that some people say install windows on one drive bare metal and proxmox with MAC OS VE on the other drive. Will windows interfere with the proxmox drive and cause problems?

Thanks

 

[oguz]

hi,

Can I use proxmox to create a PC that can duel boot in to either MAC OS or Windows on start up and use the same GPU?

you can passthrough the GPU to both VMs, the only caveat would be that you can't run them at the same time (with passthrough).
dual boot would not be necessary, you would just start the VM you'd like to use and connect to it.
if you want to do a local gaming setup then it's also possible to passthrough a display device like a monitor for each VM.

I have read that some people say install windows on one drive bare metal and proxmox with MAC OS VE on the other drive. Will windows interfere with the proxmox drive and cause problems?

you can install both windows and macos as VMs inside of proxmox. the windows install will only see its own virtual drive so it cannot mess with the rest of the physical disk.

Any advice on what the best way to acheive my goals are would be much appreciatied.

follow our documentation for the installation, i'd suggest starting with the windows VM and then reading about PCI passthrough (for GPU and/or monitor) on our wiki page [0]

hope this helps

[0]: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Pci_passthrough

 

[Therock]

you can passthrough the GPU to both VMs, the only caveat would be that you can't run them at the same time (with passthrough).
dual boot would not be necessary, you would just start the VM you'd like to use and connect to it.
if you want to do a local gaming setup then it's also possible to passthrough a display device like a monitor for each VM.

Thanks for your advice. I will give it a try then. You say no need to dual boot, just start the VM I want to use. Please tell me how will it look when I turn on my desktop. I imagine the best case scenario is that a few seconds after turning on the PC with proxmox installed a screen pops up to say boot windows or boot Mac. Whichever I choose will then boot and work with my GPU and monitor... Is this how it will be?? thanks again

 

[_gabriel]

not exactly, your case is a more advanced setup which is require many hours. but it's the best experience if all works.
pve is mainly for headless server, so once it's installed, you have just a terminal / console on screen. you need another computer to manage it from a browser.
You need trial & error to Setup passthrough on Windows and mac os.

 

[Therock]

Im struggling to get my head round how proxmox will help me acheive a duel boot like system.

I now have proxox installed and windows 11 as a virtual machine on my new gaming computer. The only way I can access this is through the web browser of another computer (my laptop) and then going to the console and opening it to full screen and using it through the browser. This is slow and certainly not like a bare metal experience I believed I would get.

I want to access this new VM windows 11 directly through the computer its installed on, not through another computer. I want to use it like a desktop with performace that maximises the hardware. How can I do this from here? On the host computer it it just has the login screen that says "please us your web browser to config this server 10.20.5:1006" Im starting to doubt if this is going to do what I want it too.

I know I need to config passthough, but not going to waste time doing this if this is not going to work for me as a duel boot PC and MAC.

Thanks again

 

[Dunuin]

You need to passthrough your GPU, soundcard, all USB devices and so on from the host into your VM. Otherwise the VM wont be able to use any of your real hardware. A VM is virtualized, so it only sees virtual hardware.
After passing through the keyboard, GPU, mouse and so on your VM can use it. You still loose performance as the VM will use virtual RAM, virtual CPUs and virtual disks.

So yes, something like a dual-boot experience would be possible but I don't see the point. You could just install both OSs bare metal to different disks and then select what disk you want to boot from. And if you fear that OSs could destroy each other, there are multi disk drive bays where you could physically disconnect disks, you don't want to boot from, by pressing a button:
https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=365
Lets say top two disks for MacOS raid1 and bottom two disks for Win raid1. If you want to boot MacOS you press the buttons for the top two disks with buttons unpessed for the bottom 2 disks so only the top two disks are powered. If you want to boot Win you reverse it and only press the buttons of the bottom two disks so the top two disks will be powered off.

Would be faster and less work by just going the bare metal route.