"To boot, or not to boot."

February 4, 2009 9:37 PM

I am finally making the jump to linux from Windows 7! To the 1337 linux askmefites: Is having the option of Windows as a secondary/emergency OS even important, or would I be better off keeping my machine strictly linux?

Right now I am running Windows 7 on a notebook. What steps do I need to take to have 7 as a dual boot?

Also, and FWIW, I have the MS Office Suite registered, but no other paid software I am too concerned with keeping.

Thanks!

posted by bradly to computers & internet (22 comments total)

Do you use games? Do you ever think you'll want to?

I'm not a gamer by any means. It mildly disappoints me, though, that I can't play the dinky games I sometimes played--Rollercoaster Tycoon, mostly, which doesn't work well with WINE. Also, you can't stream Netflix movies on Linux. Ditto with television from some streaming stations.

(I make due with SNES emulators and hulu for procrastinatory purposes, so I can't really help you with dual booting).

If you don't think you'll ever play a game, or stream a netflix movie, then I say, go ahead and get rid of Windows. It's utterly usable these days; Mr. WanKenobi has had more dirver issues with Windows lately than I've had with the last year or so with Ubuntu.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:49 PM on February 4

Driver issues, too.

I still have more typing issues, apparently.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:51 PM on February 4

Do both. I used VMware and had a Windows virtual for Netflix, Quickbooks, etc.
posted by cdmwebs at 9:52 PM on February 4

I have XP and Xubuntu. Don't get rid of your windows yet. Even the simple versions of linux can yield hours of frustration that can be solved in a few minutes by booting to windows. For example, my credit union website does not accept linux and firefox as an option for access to their website. Die hard linux guys will talk about wine and blah blah blah, but sometimes I just don't have a few hours to figure out how to get something to work.
posted by 517 at 9:52 PM on February 4

...no offense intended to the die hard linux user.

"What steps do I need to take to have 7 as a dual boot?"

Ubuntu forums will be your new friend for a while.
posted by 517 at 10:10 PM on February 4

Think of it like Pascal's Wager - what's it going to hurt to keep Win7 around? Even if you never go back to it, you'll have a nice little partition that you can reformat later to get some extra space. And never underestimate the power of a backup OS on your computer - I have two distros on my main machine for this reason, among others.
posted by eclectist at 10:10 PM on February 4

What steps do I need to take to have 7 as a dual boot?

Install Windows first (or leave it installed). Then install Linux. If it's a decent distro like OpenSUSE, the installer will let you resize the Windows partition, and the bootloader will automatically give you a choice between booting into Linux or Windows. It is quite easy.
posted by cmonkey at 10:46 PM on February 4

Don't dual boot--you'll get irritated at having to waste minutes rebooting, and minutes more booting back, just to do a 30 second job with some Windows only thing. Use VMWare to run Windows. Server is free, and Workstation isn't that expensive, and you only need workstation if you intend to spend long hours in Windows doing something where the snappiest UI feedback is needed.

If I didn't play games, Linux would be my desktop OS. Games are the only thing I've found for which there isn't a good enough alternative on Linux, if not better piece of software.
posted by fatbird at 10:54 PM on February 4

Ditto Linus OS installed, VMWare as a Widnows environment. Don't keep your "stuff" in Windows. just use it as a tool to get to the odd places you can't so easily reach in Linux. Winodws in a virtual machine is fine.
posted by anadem at 10:59 PM on February 4

I disagree with people who are telling you to jump in head first and rely on VMWare to run windows when you happen to need it. I strongly disagree. I would recommend dual booting linux with windows.

Since you're having to ask the question at all, I'm assuming you're not extremely familiar with linux at this point.

Linux is great... except when something goes wrong. And something will go wrong. And you will spend hours researching it, only to discover that the problem is still being worked on, and there's almost nothing you can do on your end.

Or you will discover that the problem has been solved, but only in the latest version of program X, which is not in any of your distros repositories, so you will have to compile it yourself if you want it.

Something as simple as plugging an external monitor into your laptop and setting its resolution properly can at times be a herculean task, even in the latest linux distros.

Long story short, install Windows (or keep the installation you have), and then install Ubuntu via wubi. Use Ubuntu for at *least* six months, and in every way you think you will ever want to, before ditching Windows entirely.

I would recommend this route to dual booting specifically because it doesn't resize the windows partition or really do much of anything that has a serious chance of breaking something.

Also, what eclectist said.
posted by Nonce at 11:30 PM on February 4

I have found that once you really start using Linux as your primary OS for the internet, that it becomes too big of a hassle to boot into the other OS. I still think it's good to dual boot though, because you'll always have it if you need it, but what's amazing is you'll realize you don't actually need it that much and it's easier to learn how to do it in Linux than to reboot.

BTW, Battle for Wesnoth is a great game for Linux, someone mentioned Linux has no good games. :)

If you do have some specific programs you want to use, find out if they're OK in WINE. That should help you decide. If you're like me and like to download hundreds of useful little programs, Linux is for you, there's so much free crap out there. :)

Also, I disagree with Nonce. Probably, nothing will go wrong. I was new to Linux, but never had any troubles that I couldn't easily fix. I recommend Ubuntu because there is a HUGE user base thus lots of other people with the same questions, and the Ubuntu forums are a great resource.

I forsee you having trouble if you dual boot with Windows 7 though. You'll have to buy an upgrade or something after the beta expires, and I doubt Microsoft made sure that Windows 7 plays well with other operating systems, so you might need to reinstall Linux at that point. But maybe that's a good thing: play around with Ubuntu or whatever distro for all that time, make mistakes, screw up your OS, and then start over with some basic knowledge of how you want to run things.
posted by brenton at 12:11 AM on February 5

Dual boot, yes, just in case something you are forgetting about turns out to only work in Windows.

As Nonce says, when you later find yourself never using Windows anymore... THEN you can toast it with confidence.

(I like Ubuntu. I'm no Linux expert but I've used many Linuxes for many years, along with Macs and Windows. I use Ubuntu more than Windows lately. But even after a month of trying everything, I still can't get my monitor to work at its real resolution in Ubuntu. Same with my wifi dongle, and same with couple of websites. But hey, it's free, and for most of what I use it for (mainly Firefox, playing movies, and shell hackery) it's great. For the few things that don't work, I have other machines sitting around. Or I can reboot in Windows if I have to.)
posted by rokusan at 12:13 AM on February 5

Having a Windows (but not a time-limited beta Windows!) partition around that you don't use can actually make it easier to use Linux. Keep your important files somewhere that both sides can read, and keep them backed up offline. Keep both Windows and Linux rescue CDs around in case you're really screwing around and you mess up the Master Boot Record. Then, the knowledge that you can always reboot when something goes wrong can make you more likely to experiment and learn with Linux in the first place.

When I first learned to use Linux, I was expecting to "ease" into it, but I ended up only rebooting for Starcraft (yes, this was so long ago that Wine didn't have any Starcraft support until the next year...). Still, knowing that I had Windows there to use in an emergency made me much more apt to try new things with Linux, and it turned out that a great way to learn everything from web server configuration to driver upgrades was: "Futz with something until it breaks, then figure out how to fix it."
posted by roystgnr at 5:33 AM on February 5

Keep it. I've tried Linux a number of times, and I love it. But every time I upgrade the OS or there are updates, something breaks. So I still need a working PC to google answers. If this is your only PC, keep windows.
posted by JuiceBoxHero at 5:40 AM on February 5

Lots of good advice in here. I only learned to be a linux buff after I accidentally overwrote my windows partition. Being forced to use an operating system with nothing to fall back on teaches you to cope.

My advice, flying in the face of everything else posted thus far, is go balls out and do 100% Linux.

I'd start with an easy distro though, Ubuntu or Suse seem to be the two favorites to start out with.
posted by teabag at 6:16 AM on February 5

I'm in agreement with the dual bootists. You may find there are applications that aren't available on one OS, or what is available may not meet your satisfaction. Also, if you're like me, there are times where you must do something at breakneck speed, like your accustomed to, without a learning curve. I always think of printing that doc with one foot out the door, 10 minutes late already.

I'd like to add, after having done this several hundred times since 1994, to plan carefully and proceed cautiously. This may take several attempts before you're successful. It may consume well over 10 hour stretches of time. It may render your equipment unusable for days. If you have a backup computer available be sure it can do what your in-progress system did (eg, print, email, burn, rip, etc. whatever). It's also really good to have something to google with when you encounter issues like "isofs_read_super: bread failed." Make notes in a paper notebook. Be patient.

Be prepared for profound changes to your lifestyle and consciousness. Welcome to the dark art of *nix.
posted by ezekieldas at 6:43 AM on February 5

Linux is great... except when something goes wrong. And something will go wrong. And you will spend hours researching it, only to discover that the problem is still being worked on, and there's almost nothing you can do on your end.

Just a note. I've been solely using *ubuntu for two years now. I am not what I'd call a highly technical user or anything like that, and I've always been able to solve any problems I've had by relying on their forums for support. I can't think of one time when it's been a matter of "whelp, screwed!" or anything like that.

That being said, I did have some graphics card issues on my old computer that required tinkering. If you ever go the full-throttle linux way, install lynx, which is a command line browser. That way, if something borks up your desktop, you can still look up the answers.

But Ubuntu 8.10 is the most stable distro I've ever used. I have had zero problems on it--not even the graphics card issues I used to have. I've had so few problems that I gave my old computer to my sixty year old mother. It's been three months so far. I keep asking her if she's having trouble with it, anticipating that something will malfunction, since she doesn't even know what a file browser is. But so far, nada. She had more complaints, problems, and confusion with Windows.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:17 AM on February 5

Keep Windows. When you have a hardware problem and call your warranty support they will only know Windows. Dells in particular also have a small DOS partition with diagnostic tools, you might need this for updating BIOS if you don't have a floppy or haven't figured out how to burn a CD version of a floppy. Go into Windows first and turn of swap space (it will complain) then defrag so your linux can get the most disk. (they may have fixed the shrink/partitioning tools by now).

But if you don't keep at least the ability to boot to the OS that came with the machine tech support will be hell for any hardware problem... they'll say "linux is unsupported OS and we don't know anything about it and it broke your computer and you're screwed". You keep dual boot and you can just be stupid user who has to walked through the steps to diagnose and confirm your hardware is bad. Or you might need it to upgrade your BIOS.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:21 AM on February 5

Keep Windows. Definitely don't dual boot -- way too time consuming. Skip the VMWare -- use VirtualBox instead. So much better. (My VMware under Ubuntu caused my keyboard to not work properly. Very frustrating. ) Note that for either, you'll probably have to recompile it each and every time you update your kernel. VirtualBox is better about reminding you to do that if need. VMware just outputs a message to the terminal which doesn't help if you're using a shortcut, and you're left wondering why the damn program won't start.

I've been a linux user for years now, and I still need a windows box occasionally. Even if it's just to test a website in IE. (No, CrossOver or Wine DO NOT work.). Virtual machines are great, because if they do get hosed, all you need to do is delete the file and re-install.
posted by cgg at 9:20 AM on February 5

My two cents: Keep windows with a dual boot setup for now. When you're confident that you're keeping linux full time, you can install VMWare, nuke that partition and reclaim the space.
posted by chrisamiller at 1:00 PM on February 5

I was never able to get my iPod touch to work in Linux. Even with Virtualbox. So if you use a touch or an iphone, keep that in mind.

I'm not sure if that will always be an issue, though. I thought I read the latest Virtualbox can work with them.
posted by puckupdate at 6:07 PM on February 5

Keep Windows. Definitely don't dual boot -- way too time consuming. Skip the VMWare -- use VirtualBox instead. So much better. (My VMware under Ubuntu caused my keyboard to not work properly. Very frustrating. ) Note that for either, you'll probably have to recompile it each and every time you update your kernel. VirtualBox is better about reminding you to do that if need. VMware just outputs a message to the terminal which doesn't help if you're using a shortcut, and you're left wondering why the damn program won't start.

I had the same problem in Ubuntu. The following command fixed it for me:

echo 'xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true' > ~/.vmware/config

A few people mentioned VMware and Netflix. Unless it's changed, VMware server doesn't support sound so you'd either have to dual-boot or use a different VMware product which you will have to pay for.
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 12:17 PM on February 6