I've closed my Windows and need to reopen it again!

December 16, 2003 8:51 AM

When I purchased my laptop, I dumped XP and installed Linux. Of course, now the inevitable has happened and I need to run a Windows-only program; is there a way to install Windows after installing Linux? Right now I have one ext3 partition.
posted by IshmaelGraves to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

you could try monkeying around with wine a bit.
posted by Hackworth at 9:27 AM on December 16, 2003

What program is it?
posted by angry modem at 9:38 AM on December 16, 2003

You can either use WINE, Win4Lin, or (if you need something that you know will work) VMWare. Otherwise you'll have to resize the ext3 partition (Use LVM and backup), install a boot manager like XOSL (I'd use XOSL since you can hide the *nix partition from windows while installing it), and install windows.

But if you only need a few programs, an emulator or virtualizer is your best best (less chance of data corruption, too).
posted by j.edwards at 10:07 AM on December 16, 2003

Response by poster: I've tried WINE, the installer on the CD crashes with an odd "loading iKernel.exe" error.

The program is Serif PagePlus 8, a low-end but decent DTP package. (Suggestions for a halfway serious DTP platform for Linux would also be great — Scribus crashes and lacks features, OpenOffice isn't really made for it and has bizarre and frustrating limitations, same with KWord).

The XOSL approach sounds like my best bet, as I'm too cheap for VMWare and Win4Lin; much appreciated.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 11:07 AM on December 16, 2003

At one point I someone had suggested Artstream for page layout work, but I never followed up. If you hunt around, you might be able to get a copy of Framemaker for Linux, but it's pretty hard to come by -- Adobe dropped it like a hot rock some time back.
posted by majick at 11:31 AM on December 16, 2003

Also, most installers don't work well under WINE, but often the software works once its installed. See if you can't copy an already-installed version of your favorite program over to your Linux box, and then hit it with WINE.
posted by majick at 11:32 AM on December 16, 2003

I've heard of ImPress, but I've never tried it. Another, Passepartout, I've never heard of before. My favorite is LyX, but I don't know if its really desktop publishing software. It's different, but it's really cool, once you get used to how it does things, and its output is really slick and professional looking.
posted by duckstab at 6:53 PM on December 16, 2003

I haven't tried this with XP, but Win 95/98/Me will work just fine if you follow the instructions in the Linux+Win9x+Grub HOWTO. Make sure that you create a Linux boot/recovery disk or CD in case something farks up. I like LNX-BBC (no relation to the public broadcaster, it stands for Bootable Business Card) for CDs, Knoppix gets pretty good reviews if you need a bootable distro w/a full KDE environment (if you're not comfortable with the command line) and Tom's Root Boot fits on a single floppy.
posted by arto at 1:13 AM on December 17, 2003