[olug] Looking for pre-built Linux desktops

DYNATRON tech dynatron at gmail.com
Wed Aug 5 02:20:29 UTC 2009


you could always dual boot. just remember to install linux second so you get
windows and linux on your /boot/grub/menu.lst (or whatever bootloader your
distro uses).

most user-friendly distros give this option during the manual partitioning
step of the install. even if NTFS uses the whole disk, you can resize the
NTFS partition to make some room, and the installer will do the rest. be
sure not to erase your recovery partition if you have one.

my laptop dual boots vista (pre-loaded - i use it for games) and ubuntu64.
the only special preparation i had to do was rebuild and inject my ACPI
settings with the intel dsdt compiler (my ACPI firmware was compiled with
the linux-sabotaging microsoft compiler, so it was necessary for ACPI to
work properly). it's a common problem, and not as hard as it sounds...and
lots of good forums out there if you need help.



On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 8:16 PM, Dan Linder <dan at linder.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 22:32, Joe Gulizia<jrguliz at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Boss was talking moving me to Windows....cheaper, easier to find
> > machines.  Standardization  BS.
>
> If I were you, right after I got it I'd install the Linux distro of my
> choice.  Once that is on, then setup VirtualBox (or VMWare Workstation
> if you have a license) and re-setup WinXP inside the VM instance.
>
> You can still use the Linux OS and be more productive, but when the
> boss asks you to run the latest Microsoft-only app, just fire up the
> WinXP session and run it there.
>
> I was doing that until recently with my laptop (3.5 years actually)
> and it worked wonderfully.  The benefit is that I could backup the VM
> disk images very easily and when WinXP decided to commit suicide, I
> could just restore the image and I was back up and running.  (Rsync to
> an rsync server on the network has great speed, BTW)
>
> And I never had a problem installing WinXP and getting it
> re-activated.  And technically it was still running on the exact same
> hardware. :-)
>
> DanL
>
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