[Tfug] Looking for help setting up dual boot

[Jim March]

There's an alternative to dual boot you might consider.  (Well
actually there's two but one kinda sucks...)

First, with Vista and dual boot, the key is to start in Vista with
shrink the Windows partition first.  NO Linux distro can really be
trusted to do the shrink process to Vista.  Once Vista's disk
management tools have cleared some free disk space (as in space with
no partition) Ubuntu for one can cope from there (with GRUB, not
LILO).

If you're doing major grade 3D games in Windows, Dual Boot is for you.
 Or really heavy Windows-based Photoshop, or video editing.

If your Windows apps aren't as "hardcore", and your system is
relatively stout (over a gig of memory, over a 1,5gHz CPU), you might
consider VirtualBox.

My laptop is a 1.6mHz Celeron single-core, nothing that strong,
1.5megs RAM.  I boot to Ubuntu which uses the whole disk (no dual
boot).  But I can then start up VirtualBox which creates as many
"Virtual Machines" as I care to set up.  Each VM is assigned a
"virtual hard disk" which is just a file in the Linux disk system, and
a fake hardware environment including whatever amount of RAM I want to
assign the VM.  I  can have as many as I want and pick whichever I
want to start.

My main VM is a copy of Windows XP.  It can run MS-Office 2003 or
2007, Quicken, genuine MS Internet Exploiter, whatever.  I use it to
take apart Diebold databases.  When I want the VM to have Internet
access, I turn that on but still use Linux as a "super firewall" (NAT
mode) protecting the Windows box from infestation.  And of course I
use Linux for all my main EMail/Web/whatever Internet stuff.

If I want to pass files from my Linux world down into the VM, I have a
"network" set up whereby the WinXP VM sees a "drive Z:" share to the
Linux directory system, letting me copy files into and out of the VM
from within XP.

On my system, Windows applications running in the XP VM run faster
than they can run on my hardware natively in Vista.  If you get
VirtualBox from their site, their edition has the ability to let VMs
directly view and use the USB ports, so scanners/printers/whatever
work within the virtual machine.  With it's smaller footprint, XP is a
better VM than Vista but Vista will work...I would recommend 2gigs
total memory at a minimum though, giving just over a gig to Vista and
leave the rest for Linux.

Under this setup the worst a virus can do is nuke the VM but leave
Linux untouched.  In dual-boot, a really nasty virus can hose the boot
sector and screw up both Vista and Linux in one shot.

The sucky option is something called "Wine" which tries to let Windows
apps run directly in Linux.  Works about half the time.  XP running as
a VM is far more compatible.  About all VirtualBox is missing right
now is 3D video support, which is why gamers still have to dual-boot.

I set up dual-boot and virtualized setups for people all the time.
I'm local but still on my Calif, cellphone: 916-370-0347.  More about
me:

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid:104509

Jim March