You're viewing a single thread.
Reinstall? Nah... I have a bunch of virtual machines, which I set up and customised the way I like. Then I back them up. Use a VM for a few months, back up personal data (if any), delete them, copy from backup, power up, install latest updates and go with it again. Depending on their function, I keep the VM for longer (gaming instance) or shorter (Internet/office) periods before replacing them. That's become just basic computer hygiene for me.
Wow I think I want to do this too. Can I ask which hypervisor you use? And, can you get gaming performance in a VM like you can on bare metal?
Actually, I'm using Type-2, regularly three VM images (not at the same time). The Internet/Office is the recent Mint version (Cinnamon; I just like the interface). The gaming VM for "modern" games is also Mint. For older gaming, I actually use a Win98SE image.
To explain the gaming: I almost exclusively play adventure games and turn-based strategies. For TBS, the replay value is very high, so I'm still happy with somewhat old titles, such as Heroes of Might and Magic II and III, Microprose strategies or Stars!. I found Win98SE to be the OS where most of them run best. Adventure games don't have such a high replay value, but there's a steady stream of new ones (via GOG) that usually work in Mint as well. As a result, I don't feel the need for a type-1 hypervisor, and can't tell how performant the games would be on bare metal.