Vista Experiment Dual booting XP, Part 3

So I successfully have a system that dual boots XP SP3 and Ubuntu 8.10. It took a bit of fiddling and research on how to properly configure the GRUB bootloader to recognize where XP's partition was and that it was something bootable.

Like anything Ubuntu related, I found the correct answer through the Ubuntu Forums. It's threads like this one that make Ubuntu Forums such a worthwhile resource. Not only is the user base pro active and helpful, it's large enough that about 95% of any problems you come across running Ubuntu have already been posted and solved. Even when I transitioned to 8.10 a few weeks early I found that there was already a great deal of posting about how to get just about everything working even with beta software.

At the end of the day computers are far too useful to be held down by only one OS. There are things that are easily done in linux that just don't work as well in Windows. On the other hand, Linux, no matter what the distribution, can produce real headaches and lots of time configuring and rebooting to diagnose a problem--and most of the time its something like a proprietary video driver that you wouldn't have to spend but a few seconds on in Windows to get it functioning.

I've been part of the linux community since about 1999 and have participated in varying degrees. Just recently I've become involved in posting on the forums when I can help diagnose a problem, but most of my experience is that of the end-user. I can't stress enough how happy I am with how the linux community has developed and I feel like the OS is finally getting to a point of maturity that would allow it to be used by just about any average user. It's still going to remain the choice of true enthusiasts though, because its free and legal and ultimately incredibly scalable.

The relative ease of installing and dual booting XP was a pleasant surprise, and I'm actually impressed at the boot time of the tidied up repack of SP3 that I ended up loading. I'm looking forward to getting Photoshop up and running and finally getting to stretch the legs of the graphics card I bought a few months ago. I don't think I'll be able to run super-current games, but I look forward to installing some classics that I used to play (Black & White, anyone?) and see what I can throw at it before it breaks.

Also, this really wouldn't have happened if not for this article over at APCmag, which gave me the courage to go ahead and take the plunge and commit to the install. They're actually got a whole series of articles about dual booting. If you're a Windows user that wants to see what this whole linux thing is, or a linux user that's a little unsure when it comes to partition tables, it's really never been a more straight-forward process to dual boot your PC.

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Vista Experiment, Part 2: Epic Fail

So none of the Vista disks I have want to load on my system. At all. Therefore, I switched to XP Professional SP3, which is installing now.

The only thing thats kind of a drag about the install is that I had to disconnect my IDE hard drive because Windows doesn't take kindly to being installed on a second disk unless it gets to write on the Master Boot Record of the main drive. Needless to say, it will be a bit easier to make changes to Grub once I install, without having to use a live cd to get let back into your OS.

Currently formating the 50gb I left free on my new SATA drive to, wretch, NTFS via the XP good ole' text based installer. XP is what I have to use at work, and I'm really only installing it because I have the extra space now. Worst case scenario is that I lose the 50 or so gb that I'v written on the first partition of the new disk, but I find that to be not very likely.

Just a couple of notes on the install so far:

I'd almost forgotten how far Linux distros have come in the last few years in terms of ease of use. Windows seems incredibly painful just even getting it off its feet, and this is software that you have to pay for.

The fact that Vista just said "No," to my hardware doesn't do much to reaffirm my faith in Microsoft. I'm hopeful that Windows 7 will buck the trend started by Vista. I thought MS was all about hardware compatibility anyway. Or at least that's the impression I get from the fanboys, however few of them are left.

It's funny too that my failed Vista install happened today, hot on the heels of this article at PCWorld, about how XP is refusing to fall by wayside behind Vista.

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