Whats the Difference?
Dual booting is running Ubuntu alongside Windows on your hard drive. You select which operating system to use upon startup and have to restart your computer in order to switch. By using VirtualBox, you can boot windows and then run Ubuntu like it is a program. You can swap operating systems with the click of the mouse and use both at the same time even.
Why Should I Even Dual Boot Then?
Even though VirtualBox sounds like a much better option on paper, one very important thing makes me recommend dual booting over VirtualBox every time, performance. By dual booting, all your resources are available to Ubuntu and the operating system is not affected by running on top of Windows. The performance difference is night and day. This one reason makes up for the inconvenience of having to restart to swap operating systems. Things like games and GPU intensive applications will not even run and CPU intensive applications such as audio DAWs or video editors will have a noticeable performance hit under VirtualBox.
Are There Any Reasons To Use VirtualBox?
There are two reasons to run Ubuntu under VirtualBox, safety and multitasking. VirtualBox does not affect your actual computer hardware, so improperly partitioning your drive or wrecking your Ubuntu install doesn't matter because you can start a new one and still have your Windows install. If you were to dual boot and you clicked the wrong option in the partitioner, you could erase Windows or worse yet, erase Windows and not even be able to install Ubuntu. Another reason to use VirtualBox is if you only need a few Ubuntu applications or you need to use Ubuntu and Windows at the same time. You could then use both operating systems at the same time and share files using Guest Additions.
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