Dual Boot Issues

I've been setting up my customers older machines (XP) with dual booting Linux/ Windows etc.. for a while now without any anomalies. A few times intitially the Linux installation wasn't accomplished fully and the situatation you described had occurred.

For the last four years or so, using Ubuntu (starting with 7.04, and going through 10.04), I have had no problems when dual booting with XP. My concern is, has something changed with Windows (Vista and/or Win7) that interferes with standard dual booting configurations?

I was dual booting 10.04 & vista on this machine

Even before the dual boot I had access issues with vista, getting blocked to even accessing the shared files.

my less than elegant solution....

ditch MS & all the attendant problems :D

MS has probably made it so user friendly & secure it doesn't actually work, unless you follow an unwritten procedure [7 may be better, but i'm sure not going to blow $100 or so to have it suck up all the processor speed]

I'm sure the Moose & B [local MS fanboys] have good practical advice about how to structure the partitions & such to minimize the tendency for MS OS's to protect you from yourself....

I ran a dual boot with Vista and did not seem to have issues with normal functions. The Norton's Ghost did not want to image the Vista/SUSIE drive though. I recently upgraded to the Windows 7 but have not put the Linux second OS on yet to give you results with those two.

If this was something that Microsoft had come up with to "discourage" dual-boot set-ups, then logically, it would have been designed to deny access to Linux rather than Windows. How odd. Though admittedly, Windows 7 is somewhat different that XP.

If it is Microsoft (I personally doubt it by the way!), then one of the clever computer people around the world will find the smoking gun with Bill Gates fingerprints on it.....the they have a REAL problem......it won't do them financially any good at all.....

I am guessing wildly that its probably at worst unintentional of MS & BG.

I will wait up and see what is found out.....

This guessing and supposing is a bit much - bye.

From Sleepy,

I am dual booting Win 7 and Win XP. No problems there as yet.

I have been dual booting since Win2000 and NT.

I have NOT tried any Linux distro, either here or stand alone, I keep getting folks trying to help me in that direction.

i would need more time to even try.

Good Luck

keep the posts flying

Sleepy

You can try it before you install

by burning a Live CD

or or usb

Garthh,

Thanks very much but it is the time to learn Linux and how many variants? that pushes my mind to the back of the queue.

I can do almost anything that I want to with Microsoft and its apps and utilities, Why do i want to take on yet another learning curve?

But thanks very much, maybe someday I will find a spare year or two?

Meanwhile I succesfully dual boot between Vista and Win7 to gradually build a competent Win7 machine. This is my current learning curve.

Thanks Garthh,

I have friends who will despair of me, I am sure!!

Go to it and enjoy!

Sleepy

The link was to Ubuntu, I'm using 10.04 which is [LTS] long term stable, which means it will be supported with updates for 3 years [it will work for many years after that], the official software repository has 30'000 apps, countless others in places like source forge

no need to learn any other linux variants

there really isn't much of a learning curve. the folder based file system, is familiar to any windows user

for surfing & mail using Firefox, there's nothing to learn

there might be a bit to learn if you're going from windows office suite to open office the structure of the operating system is a bit more secure, due to the much more limited access to what is the equivalent of the registry in linux. 10.04 will run just fine on a on a 10 year old pc that would barely run XP

ubuntu will run on as little as 256mb of ram[though you'll be happier with a gig]

the ability to run outdated hardware is one of the biggest positives

But hey if your happy with 7 & can afford a machine with enough hardware to run it feel free :D

Garthh-

OpenOffice is not the only OpenSource solution to MS Office, and there are some simpler, or more specialized, approaches that may be more suitable than OpenOffice. For instance, have a look at AbiWord (http://abisource.com/) for a simple, light weight word processor if you don't need all of the esoteric "electronic publishing" features that tend to obfuscate the basic functioning of a word processor. Or if you want to publish a technical paper, there are a number of LateX solutions out there that may be more appropriate than MS Word or OpenOffice...The lightweight version of Ubuntu (once called Xubuntu) used to come with Abiword instead of OpenOffice- I don't know if that is the case or not.

Question, can you install ubuntu with only 256k of RAM, I tried on an older laptop (Win95, last used with 98SE) and it simply did not work, but this was a version 6.xx or so.

Has the situation improved since then?

Thanks in advance for any help/hints you have in this area.

From the Ubuntu documentation:

"The minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu 10.10 is 256 MB of memory. Note that some of your system's memory may be unavailable due to being used by the graphics card. If your computer has only the minimum amount of memory, the installation process will take longer than normal; however, it will complete successfully, and the system will perform adequately once installed."

If this does not make you happy, there is Xubuntu:

"

You need 192 MB RAM to run the Live CD or 192 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only requires you to have 64 MB RAM at install time.

To install Xubuntu, you need 2.0 GB of free space on your hard disk.

Once installed, Xubuntu can run with starting from 192 (or even just 128) MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 256 MB RAM."

There are quite a few other minimalist Linux distros available, not all of them Ubuntu-based, and not all of them necessarily as user-friendly as Ubuntu. There is also this new thing about Ubuntu for netbooks, which may be appropriate for "resource challenged" hardware...

Good infos, I think that you may have just pointed out two areas of possible contention, I will look into them shortly. Thanks.

I can speak from my own experience, I installed on a 1.3Ghz pentium III, with 500mb, it ran fine for everything but video, where it was noticeably slow, after increasing to 1gb ram

my internet connection is the limiting factor now

I would try Puppy Linux which is about as minimal as I have tried. the entire thing is 100mb

I suspect you would find the learning curve in going from Windows to Linux, especially the newer versions of Ubuntu, would be a whole lot less than "upgrading" to a new version of Windows. Everything just works, from first boot on. The only apps that I have not found to be better than Windows-based apps are CAD programs. And, I understand that if you are a gamer, Linux is most likely not for you. If you limit yourself to the prepackaged apps from the host distro system (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.), installing new apps is straight-forward and won't break your pre-existing system (the installation process checks to make sure you have all the necessary components, and adds the ones you are missing automatically- or, if there is a conflict, it will let you know and give you a chance to make a decision about which is more important to you). You also don't have to click through pages and pages of Windows Install Shiled- find the package you want, click to install, click "Apply", and go off and have a cup of coffee (unless you are lucky enough to have broadband, in which case you will not have time for a cup of coffee before the package is ready to use).

I really like the idea that the computer is ready to use as soon as I install the operating system, about a 15 to 20 minute process, mostly automatic (even for dual boot installations), with all of the apps that the normal user is going to need (browser, Office suite, image manipulators, sound system, print drivers, video codecs (mostly- some issues here), etc, etc) ready to run at the end of the install.

I have been working through the evolution if Windows since 3.1. The switch from 98Se to XP was especially difficult for me, and was what turned me towards a fresh look at alternatives. Just one quick look at Vista, and I wasn't even willing to give it a try- especially since most of the legacy software I use won't run on Vista. Upgrading to a newer version of Ubuntu (starting with 7.04, on through 10.04) has required virtually no adjustment to the newer system at all (although somewhere between 9.04 and 9.10 Ubuntu made some unexpected changes to their file structure which confused me a bit at first- not something the casual user is going to deal with, though).

Mostly, though, I like the Linux universe because I like having choices (and I no longer have to rebuild the system from scratch every six months or so because of some virus infection or corrupted registry)...

warner_7

I have been in computing since way before Microsoft - Sinclair, BBC Micro, and so on, bought my companies first computers to get a major bid off the ground. Spent an enormous amount of money on 3 PCs with 10MB Hard Drives (partitioned into CPM and ,<forgotten>)

Thanks for that, i will keep it in mind, there seem solid advantages either way. Most of my correspondents use Windows and Microsoft Office and I get complaints if I have forgotten that they use version x of programme Y.

Ok, I can use Open source version of Office and would they know? I don't know and I guess that scares me a little. I have one correspondent who uses Linux, don't know what flavour, I will ask and we might take it from there.

Thanks for the reassuring message!

I will watch this thread develop and wish you all bon voyage; perhaps I will follow at my own pace!

Thanks again

Sleepy