IT Professionals

Today's The Day!

Posted by on Mar 22, 2007 | 16 Comments

Well, today is the day that I will be dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu. And unlike most people, I am going to take the hard road and install Vista right next to my existing Ubuntu install. So what’s the catch? I will be doing so without installing Vista first. As you can see from this tute, I have my work cut out for me. Needless to say, it looks like fun.

So I am curious, how many of you are running two or more operating systems? Be it Windows XP and Vista, Windows XP and Linux or even Windows Vista and Linux. Hit the comments, let’s talk about your experience getting things to work with your chosen operating systems. Feel free to share challenges and successes as well.

Speaking for myself, I may even go the really brave route and take this “Super Grub” for a test run in this type of situation. Not to be confused with Super Tux, Super Grub is designed to help you in repairing MBRs gone wrong. I too, will make sure to share my experiences once I get things up and running.

[tags]xp,vista,ubuntu,linux,mbr,grub[/tags]

  • http://fractalbeanstalk.blogspot.com/ Tim Hodkinson

    I have Xp and Puppy Linux, but it’s not dual boot, it’s two different computers, but on a network. The older one has Puppy (450mhz). I tried Debian on it about 5years ago (Potato, I think) and that was enough Linux for me, for 5 years. What’s amazing is that Puppy installed effortlessly. It found my router on the network; samba found my other computer, Xp, and read it’s shared files directory; I went online (DSL) and listened to streaming video and audio, Flash too; I even downloaded the Gnusense iso and burned it to a CDR. Puppy looks a little dorky, but it’s the best distro for an older computer. I’ve also tried on the same machine: Ubuntu (nice but slow), Xubuntu (slow too), Damn Small Linux (great, fast, but really only a livecd demo), Gnusense (just like Ubuntu). All of them were smooth, easy installs, and allowed me to do what I do with Xp with the exception of running my specialty graphics programs (fractals, photoshop filters). What’s interesting to note about Puppy is that my download speeds were faster with it than they were with Ubuntu.

    If for some reason I had to abandon Windows altogether, I could live with Linux (I mean, Gnu/Linux…) now, unlike 5 years ago, since I’ve discovered most of my fractal programs run with Wine without the need for any special configuring and just as fast too, (wine has really become advanced). There’s some little annoyances (Flash 9), but basic desktop computing is easy with Linux now.

    You ought to check out Puppy Linux. When it boots up, it barks. The package installer is based on Debian’s apt-get and called Pup-get (should have been “fetch”). When you download the “.pup’s” their icon is a dog biscuit. It’s so weird, it’s cool. Puppy is what Xubuntu should have been.

  • http://www.geocities.com/martinbreguet/servi-pc.html Martin

    Yes indeed, Matt, I have to dual-boot all my 4 PC’s…

    3 of them are internet-café’s PC’s, and most customers want Windows.

    So it is winxp & Edubuntu Dapper on one, so my kids can play those educative games…

    And the 2 others have winxp & Mint Bianca… I plan on replacing Mint Bianca with the upcoming Edubuntu Feisty whenever it comes, as I am definitly not comfortable with the Mint layout, the menu & all the Mint particularity…

    My own box has winxp & FedoraCore 6, which seems to be the perfect OS for that very particular hardware… I might go Fedora only for all my boxes depending on the upcoming Fedora 7…

    -Why do I still dual-boot my own box ??? I never ever use winxp ! Wait, I still do sometimes, because my scanner (BenQ 4300) sometimes isn’t recognized under any distros… So I still have to scan in winxp… And my business-cards are done with MS Publisher so I am stuck, whenever I need more cards, I have to print them from winxp… Apart from that, I never ever use it…

    My laptop runs Dapper only, and my old legacy PC runs Vector only…

    I don’t plan on doing Vista, since my hardware doesn’t permit it, and I have to tell you about the lack of control of pirate copies on winxp allows anyone to run it for the same price as Fedora ;)

  • wearekosh

    Dual boot Ubuntu and XP story-

    I have run windows since Bill shipped 3.11 to Australia and have now stopped at XP. recently installing Ubuntu as a dual boot.
    It was a bit of a struggle at first, not the install that was a breeze, but to get my Matrox G450 working in Dual head mode. The public forums were a god send with the help they provided and I now have both monitors working well – and with the two workspaces i am now getting used to having and swapping between the 4 monitors worth of workspaces. It’s sooo cool. watch a movie,surf a couple of sites and answer email all at the same time, all full screen windows, ahhhh sensory overload – hehe.

    I have only kept windows because of all the expensive graphic and video software I have collected over the years and am very familiar with.

    Working with Ubuntu is quite ok, I like Gimp and Open Office (and they are free -BigWideGrin-) and am getting to know them and other productivity programs.

    Playing with Ubuntu has it’s frustrations – some web based games don’t work ( those that seem to be written with the xdirector plugin) and a few web videos don’t want to play (like those at http://www.evilchili.com) but i am still looking into these small problems.

    Most other sites (of worth) work well in firefox – those that don’t i ask the administrator why.

    So all in all, i guess i am now one of the converted and bow down and pay tribute to Linus Torvald and Richard Stallman, Linux and GNU and the open-source/free-ware movement.

    Have a nice day
    and greetings for Down under
    wearekosh

  • Fred Naatz

    I have Vista and XP Pro SP2 in two partitions on my hard drive. Utilizing Virtual Server 2005 RC2 and Virtual PC 2007, I use many types of Windows; also I installed Ubuntu and SUSE. I tried some others but Ubuntu & SUSE are my favorite. My next plan is to put my two favorite Linux onto a laptop I own. Should be interesting!

  • http://www.kreykesconsulting.com Brett K.

    I dual boot XP Pro and Ubuntu…works well!

    Gotta say this: my 2.5 year old knows how to shut down XP, choose Ubuntu from the boot menu, and start playing his favorite games.

    Makes me so proud. *sniff* :)

    -b

  • Len Cleavelin

    XP and openSUSE on my home box. I work in a Windows shop, and need to keep a Windows box at home in case I need to do some telecommuting (or to play those games that just won’t play in Linux yet). I’ve been operating in dual-boot mode at home since about mid-2001 (that was Win98SE and Mandrake (now Mandriva)) with no problems. Though I’ve yet to be adventurous enough to install Windows first; let us know how that goes.

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Thanks to everyone for all of the feedback. :)

    wearekosh: I am not sure why, but evilchili videos appear to play for me. It may have to do with what I call the “Fox News Video Fix”. I call it this as it relates to the way Fox News did their videos with Flash, not that I do or do not prefer them as a news source. I came up with it on a request sometime ago. So this greasemonkey fix may work for you.

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Tim: Check this out from sometime back. ;)

  • Evan

    I boot Vista Ultimate, Ubuntu 6.10, and OpenSuse 10.2 on my brand new Vaio notebook (plus Solaris 10 and FreeBSD 6.2 in VMware). I took the easy road though and used the Ubuntu live cd to wipe and partition the drive, and then installed Vista first. Ubuntu detected Vista and set up grub perfectly. Good luck in not installing Vista first!

    I gotta say, I boot into Ubuntu the most though (>80% of the time). I’ve always preferred Linux over Windows, and Beryl is far better than Aero. But I do like Vista a lot, it’s much better than XP.

  • http://fractalbeanstalk.blogspot.com/ Tim Hodkinson

    Nice review. But you didn’t mention the barking dog at startup : )

    I read a couple articles there at Mad Penguin. I like your thoughts about open-source licenses. Your opinions are very sensible regarding the relationship between “free” sofware and proprietary. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who agree with you.

  • Lynn

    I will be interested in reading your dual Linux-Vista boot experiences. Ten or twelve years ago I had a Windows 95 and 98 dual boot at work where I was a programmer. I have found that it required a lot of additional space and effort to keep the two systems updated. I have avoided a home Linux-Windows dual boot up to this date due my work experience.
    Based on your reports I may decide to try a Linux Vista dual boot.

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  • http://www.nommesen.com/torrey Torrey Nommesen

    I am using Windows XP, Mac OSX and Ubuntu. Windows on a new laptop, and Ubuntu and OSX on an old G4 tower with very little RAM. I was a mac user and my computer died, so I bought a PC because it was all I could afford, then someone donated a Mac to me. When the previous Mac died, miraculously I didn’t loose any data off the hard drive. So now I’m migrating everything to the PC and trying to make sure all my files work on all 3 platforms. It’s a nightmare of switching cables, hard-drives, and converting files, but it’s fun. I’m learning alot about how the other half lives. A good resource for folks that think they know everything about computers but don’t (self included) is a podcast from Harvard found at computerscience1.org – it’s helped me to understand my new PC.

  • Tom DeLora

    I run Window XP Pro and Libranet 3.0, on 2 different hard drives and no trouble with dual boot sequences.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/michael/ Michael McMaster

    Howdy Matt!

    I recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 onto a hard drive and set it up to dual boot with XP Home. Not a bit of a problem, seeing as I was using an entire hard drive. So far, I have been booting up into Ubuntu and plan on trying to see how far I can make it go. I don’t really plan on purchasing Vista anytime soon (maybe in 4 years or so – heh), so I am doing my bet to learn all I can about Linux – Ubuntu in particular. So far, so good, as the saying goes!

  • GrumpyToo

    Hi Y’all
    For some time, I have triple-booted Win98SE, Win2000, and SUSE Linux 9.3… I had purchased a large (at the time) HD and wanted to “keep my hand in” the various systems I might run across… I left space / empty partition on HD for FreeBSD, but never got around to installing it. However, I have happily run the 3 OSs without any trouble. i installed each to its own partition, and “in order” – Win98se, then Win2K, Then SUSE.
    Dominus vobiscum,