Stop Microsoft
Miscellaneous => The Lounge => Topic started by: panophobia on 1 February 2002, 16:28
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Now, I've never done anything like this before, so bear with me and the few stupid questions I have.
For one, is it possible to keep Windows on here, and have a secondary OS I could somehow switch back and forth to?
Also, which of the free OSs out there would you recommend to a "newbie"? [new at least to an OS other than Windows.]
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Yes, it's fairly easy to keep windows, and have another OS, you must partition yr hard drive so that it looks to your computer as if it is 2 seperate drives. If you get a free Linux distribution such as Red Hat or Turbolinux, it will come with tools you can use to do this quite simply. Documentation for said can also be found at the homepages of whoever manufactured your distribution of Linux... anybody want to add?
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Hey,
I have just recently switched over completely to Mandrake 8.1 linux. I was a dos/windows user. I found Mandrake very easy to install and use.
I would recommend that you repartition your hard disk under Windows first. Here is how I would suggest you go about it.
As an example lets say you have a 20 gig hard disk.
Boot to Dos under windows (use floppy if necessary)
Run Fdisk.
Build your windows primary partion as a 2 Gig drive.
Now make your extended partition but use only about half or less of the remaining drive. IE if you have 18 Gig left use 9 Gig or less . Lets say you use 5 Gig for your extended partition.
That leaves 13 Gig free.
Build the extended partition 5 Gig partition.
Reboot your system and format your C (2Gig) and D (5 Gig) drives.
Reinstall windows.
Now download and read the install docs from the distro's website.
Now when you install Mandrake or any other Linux OS you have lots of room to play with. The distro you get will help you get your drives setup. Under Mandrake I would suggest you go with the expert install because the recommended install kinda sucks. Also Mandrake is supposed to be able to resize your windows partition if necessary but it did not work right for me. that is why I suggested the above partition scheme.
Now when Mandrake asks you to setup the drives follow its suggestions for the root and swap drives then use the remainder for you usr drive.
Mandrake will automatically format them after you have partitioned them then finish the install.
Near the end of the install process Mandrake will install a bootloader so you can choose between Linux and Windows at boot time.
Mandrake offers a very user friendly installation and an easy to use for windows people format.
Ok that is what I would suggest do with it what you wish.
Later
Centurian
[ February 01, 2002: Message edited by: Centurian ]
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Couple other thoughts. If you do not want to lose what you already have (do not want to reinstall Windows). Find someone with a copy of partition magic. Shrink your C: partition so that you leave around 4GB of unallocated disk space at the end of your drive. Then install your Linux distro on that free space (it will create a Linux partition on that free space and set up the dual boot for you).
I would leave the largest partition for WIndows. Why? Linux can use the disk space on the WIndows partition as well as the disk space on the Linux partition. Windows can not use the disk space on the Linux partition because it is brain dead.
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I just heard about the ne OS Lindows!! Supposively it will be able to run windows programs without the bullshit of microsoft!!!
do a search today for Lindows and offer all the support you can cause this is the one that could kill them for good!!! (http://smile.gif) (http://smile.gif) (http://smile.gif) (http://smile.gif) (http://smile.gif)
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By the way Thanks for the partitioning ideas (mainly voidmain's suggestion). I can use that scheme so that i can still run my windows programs while im waiting for Lindows! (http://smile.gif)
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I think that people have too much of expectations of Lindows. It would run initially only office type of apps. You may wait quite a while to see a support for all your apps you use on regular basis, if ever.
There is another solution in the interim, before we see more ports to Linux.
Actually two, but I have experience with one only, so I can't vouch for anything beyond what I know.
VMWare. It run on the top of linux desktop, creating a virtual machine (e.g. virtual window). Some precautionary notes. You need at least 256mb RAM and a decent video card (32 mb). Then it runs quite well, provided that you do not insist on candys like animated menus and transparencies.
The doze window is full screen expandable (in fact, I recommend that). You just install it and run like you would windoze if it were the only system on the box, yet you can switch between and even do some rudimentary copy and paste.
There are some strings attached, it is not cheap ($199). To outweigh that, you can have several VM's on the box if your RAM is more generous. Practically any supported OS, from all doze versions to another Linux, FreBSD, and even some exotic *nixes. Which means that once you throw away your old doze shoes or even before you say adieu to it, you can use the program to run OS' or distros that interest you, betas, whatnot, without worries how it affects your current configuration.
Addendum: VMWare creates virual disk images (something like ISO, or compressed hd track) that does not affect the underlying OS -- except you need enough space which is not a problem in this age of cheapo 10's G HD's. Just an observation, w2k seems to run faster under vmware than in its native configuration. Probably does not crash as much either, but then I did not have it on all the time, I just fired it up when I needed it. And last but not least, making a backup means copying the disk images. That translates into a full system backup, a virtual clone, and it beats any other method timewise.
[ February 07, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]
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Since part of the reason i spend hours upon hours on my computer is to get my fix of high speed gaming, piggy-backing (so to speak) multiple OS's isnt a good choice.. Sure seperate OS's dont slow each other down very much, but windows doesnt 'like' to work with anything but windows.. I personally have the opinion that the more simple i keep my computer (less clutter, Kind of like an apartment) ,the faster it performs. Simulations of windows in other OS's eat up alot of memory and processor time. What would be the point of having linux for example and windows on the same hard drive (I have seprate hard drives for each) when windows by itself would run my programs faster.. I'm not sayin that i like it but if i want to run most of my games (with a few exeptions) then i have to do it through the instability and inefficiancy of windows. I guess that the idea of a combination is what i've dreamed of for a while now so in that i may be over-estimating Lindows i would have to agree.
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From what i am reading on this forum, you can run a VMWARE virtual machine as a program using your Linux OS, and have Windows installed on that. Many of the people here are saying that Windows runs MORE STABLY and is LESS LIKELY TO CRASH when run in such a way!
It seems then, that from your clutter point of view, you may want to consider doing just that, when you get yr copy of Linux installed, then see how Windows runs in VMWARE, and if you think it's good enough for your uses, you are free to delete the windows OS entirely from your machine, freeing up some space, keeping it simple, and making your windows installation more stable in the process!
I know it may seem to you like Windows can't possibly run more stably on another OS than it does on its own, but i gather there are many reasons why it does in fact run better as a Linux program rather than a seperate OS in its own right. The first of these is that Linux uses the ext2 and ext3 filesystem structures, which are much more stable than FAT, FAT32, or even the slightly more robust NTFS.
I am no Linux expert, so over to the real dudes now, to hear if anyone can back me up, say something i haven't thought of, or tell me i'm talking through my arse...
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Calum, you got most of it right but I just need to clarify a couple of things. When you run Windows under VMware you are not running Windows as a Linux program. Windows is running natively on it own hardware (but that hardware is virtual). When you start up a VMware session you click the power button just like you would on a real computer. You will see the BIOS screen pop up, count up the memory just like you do on a real computer. You can press a key and go into the BIOS and set it up just like a real computer etc. If you have the Windows CD in the drive it will boot windows, where Windows will detect all of your hardware (it just happens to be virtual hardware but Windows doesn't know that). It will detect it's own hard drive which is configured like any other hard drive when installing windows and be formatted FAT or FAT32 (it's a virtual hard drive but Windows doesn't know that). Windows has *no* idea that there is another operating system running. It thinks it has the machine all to itself.
Now the reason Windows can run more stably is because no matter whose machine you run this on, or what the real hardware is, it will always be the same basic hardware for WIndows running in VMware. For instance, it will detect an AMD network card not matter what type of network card you are really running. So it will use the same hardware drivers on every persons installation of VMware. Now you can make SCSI or IDE virtual hard drives available and when you plug your favorite USB device in you may have to install the Windows drivers just like you would any other time so it's still Windows.
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That is a peice of genius!
I never knew VMware was so good! so, it uses Linux's knowledge of your real hardware to create an interface between the virtual hardware and the real hardware? that's fantastic!
And VMware converts whatever windows is saving to a linux filesystem format instead of FAT? and back again when windows wants it? is that right? that's utter genius!
Sorry, i am new to the concept, i never realised all this about VMWare.
Does it have a virtual BIOS as well? does it interface with yr real BIOS?
What if you have some odd hardware... Will VMWare detect the odd hardware via Linux (where the hardware will already be recognised) and translate it so it looks like a plug and play device to Windows? or are there some peripherals that windows just won't see when running as VMWare?
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You are getting very close to having it nailed. Yes, VMware can only use the hardware that Linux has access to, but in the Virtual machine it will be presented as a standard piece of hardware. For instance, no matter what type of network card you really have, VMware will present it as a specific model of AMD card. And it is pretty slick how it creates a virtual IDE or SCSI hard drive. When you set up a default virtual machine (VM) the hard drive will be a 4GB IDE disk (this disk will be associated with a "single" file on the Linux side of the house). And the size of the drive is adjustable in the VM setup, along with the amount of RAM you want to give to the VM, what other devices you want to be "enabled" etc.
When you boot up the VM you will see the memory count up, you will see that it has detected a 4GB hard drive, you can press <F2> to enter the BIOS setup just like on a real PC and you will find that it is running a real Pheonix BIOS, menu driven (just happens to be in software rather than a ROM chip on a motherboard, but you and Windows can't tell that). In the BIOS you can do everything you can do on a real BIOS because it *is* a real BIOS, like setting drive boot order, etc etc. Now Windows will see the 4GB IDE drive and install just as if it were a real drive because it is a real drive as far as Windows is concerned. The beauty of it is the file associated with the Windows disk is only as large as the amount of data on the virtual disk. e.g. It will fdisk and format out the drive to 4GB in Windows where you install the OS, then you install whatever Windows apps you want, and let's say that only takes of 200MB of the 4GB disk. On the Linux side of the house, the file will only be 200MB. It will grow as you add software and data in the Windows VM.
Now, this all may sound like it would be very complicated to set up and use but I can't stress how easy this software is to use. The first time I used it I giggled like a little kid because up until that point I would have said this was impossible. Kinda like when that article came out about Dean Kamen's IT (Ginger, Segway, whatever you want to call it). The one (prior to the public revealing of Segway) where he showed the mystery device to his investors and they reportedly giggled with glee when they saw what it could do.
Now, VMware is also available for NT/Win2K so you *can* use those MS OSs as your "Host" operating system rather than Linux but there are some limitations in doing it that way.
One of the cool parts about it is that you can set up as many VMs as you want (providing you have teh disk space) running any number of Operating systems or multiple configurations of the same operating system, each VM takes up just a single directory on the host operating system (in my case Linux) with about 4 files in it's directory.
And once you have installed your guest operating system in it's VM, you can take the files created on the host filesystem and move to any other real computer running VMware and bring up your guest OS already configured the way you like and it will work (better than Drive Image or Ghost). As far as what the few VMware files are on the host operating system. Roughly one file is the guest HD, another is the config file, another is a RAM file if you use suspend features, and I think a log file. There are more features than what I am giving you in this but it really is a cool product. And you can try out an uncrippled version for free (30 days that is). I would not suggest trying it without a machine that has healthy resources though (the faster the processor the better, and the more RAM you have the better, and of course as much disk space as you need for all your guest OS and software).
[ February 15, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
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I'm triple-booting Win98. LibraNet Linux 1.9.1 and CorelLinux 1.2. You can boot up to 12 different OS's using LILO, if you don't mind a little command-line editing. I don't like using an OS that "runs on top" of Windows- when it shits the bed, it REALLY shits the bed. Separate partitions and LILO/LoadLIN/XOSL/GRUB, or any other bootloader you like.
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You are free to do whatever you consider the best. It is just, you've probably misunderstood the VMWare concepts. You can have a version that runs under winxx/2k/xpee and run another OS on the top of that, but you can also have a version that runs in Linux and run almost any other OS on the top of that.
An Example: I run on one of my workstations mandrake 8.1. All resources are allocated to it. Now I got a while ago ISOs of mdk 8.2 Beta and wanted to check that out. I fired up VMWare, installed it in it. I did not have to reboot my current OS, allocate resources by repartitioning, no such a thing.
I also have win2kp as another VM if I need it, and another that has a facsimile of Linux Sun Cobalt OS installed on it so I can check things that I develop for my raq server before I unleash them.
These VM have the exact persistence I want them to have. I can easily remove the mdk 8.2 B now because I don't need it anymore simply by deleting the related files.
And, of course, it takes ctrl+alt to switch from your VM to your real OS, and back you go by just clicking the mouse inside the VM window.
Simply priceless. ;)
BTW, the idea of VMs is not that foreign to linux, just the opposite, it is an OS that is rather natural for that kind of critter. Quite a few ISP use a somewhat different paradigm of VM to isolate users and to give them root privileges in higher end hosting packages. Works far better than 'jailing' the user through cumbersome methods.
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quote:
Originally posted by creedon:
I'm triple-booting Win98. LibraNet Linux 1.9.1 and CorelLinux 1.2. You can boot up to 12 different OS's using LILO, if you don't mind a little command-line editing. I don't like using an OS that "runs on top" of Windows- when it shits the bed, it REALLY shits the bed. Separate partitions and LILO/LoadLIN/XOSL/GRUB, or any other bootloader you like.
Dual booting is fine (I even have several partitons for LILO but I rarely reboot). I prefer to run all of my OSs at the same time rather than reboot all the time. To get into Windows from Linux I just ALT+TAB. (http://smile.gif) Shit, I have RedHat 7.2 running as my host OS and have Win98, Win2k, Solaris x86, and FreeBSD all running at the same time on the same machine and all show up on my network as 6 different machines.
And I can switch to any of them at my 21 inch conole with the click of a button or key. And if you "full screen" any of them you wouldn't even know the other operating systems were running. It's magic!
[ February 15, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
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> I prefer to run all of my OSs at the same time rather than reboot all the time.
Not mentioning that would invalidate your uptime stats. :)
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Oh, I don't claim to have long uptimes on my desktop systems. Not with the power going out all the time. :0
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Just kidding. :)
The 'booting' into vmware is a lot shorter than real booting and switching between OS is a matter of less than a second, that is what counts.
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And really it's more than just switching *between* OSs. I use several of them at the same time. For instance, one of my kids might be farting around in Windows on the console, while I am in the living room on the laptop logged in to the linux side of it over the network, running X apps remotely (lot faster running the apps on the Athalon 1600 with lots of RAM and displaying them on my laptop over the network than running them directly on the old laptop), or I might be recompiling a kernel, or other open source code etc...
And it's a great testbed to have multiple servers up at the same time without having to have multiple physical machines. For instance I fired up two copies of Solaris x86 to brush up on my NIS/NIS+ knowlege and testing Linux NIS connectivity with them. Even have a copy of Win2k Server with Exchange (for connectivity testing).
One of the best parts is the ease and speed of installing the guest OS as you mention. You don't have to go searching for all those hardware drivers for Windows because VMware exposes compatible hardware. The installation of any Win* OS under VMware is much easier and faster than any native install. And you don't have to repartition your drive or change your boot loader. But the *best* part is, you never have to shut down Linux. ;)
[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
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Complete agreement. I was many times sorry to spend bucks on some ware, but never for VMWare.
But I think that we should leave it at that or else people would think that VMware pays us to get new users! :D
[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]
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Okay, so where should we get VMware from, for Linux and/or Windows, and how much does it cost, because i might well be sold...
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VMWare for windoze ... I don't recommend. Simply because you would be running a good OS on the top of a shitty one. I am not sure, but it is somehow limited (my impression), check what it supports.
www.vmware.com (http://www.vmware.com)
get the 30-days trial (you can extend it sorta by registering with nuther name/email before it expires in the case you did not have a chance to 'try' it out fully :D )
The cost: $199
[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]
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There's no chance i would try and run it on windows, but i like to know about these things, because I hope to have linux installed at some point, and vmware will enable me to totally remove windows from my computer. This would be ace. I really wouldn't mind paying money to not have windows on the PC, It's paying money to HAVE windows that pisses me off.
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i just noticed that that's $199. <exagerate>I may as well buy a new real machine and install windows on that!,</exagerate>
Back to the old drawing board i suppose :(
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Worth every penny. Although I only paid $99, but that was the upgrade cost for 2.0 which I also originally paid $99. I certainly don't *need* it but as someone else has mentioned here, it is one of the *few* products that is worth the admission price. And I used it for 3 months before paying for it (just register every month with a different email address), in fact if you really wanted to cheat there probably is a license file floating around there but you know how much I hate pirating. It is very useful for me personally as I have to deal with so many different operating systems. Most people don't. Even if you only have to deal with one version of Windows and Linux it's worth the money just to be able to have full usability of both systems at the same time on the same machine.
Certainly I wouldn't suggest buying it without trying it for the trial month and make your own decision. Wish more companies gave a full uncrippled trial period. Of course most of those software packages probably wouldn't get purchased once the trial was up because they suck.
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That someone was me.
I also bought the 2.0 for $99 and upgraded to 3.0 ($99). The funny part was that I bought the 2.0 for linux BEFORE (6 months) I had linux on my system. It just seemed like extremely cool idea that when I will have linux on my system, I'll can just tuck windoze away into vmware and that would be the end of reboots as I knew it.
I was right. The additional benefit of running other OS's in vmware was an icing on the cake.
There is another example:
A friend of mine was thinking about switching to Linux. The problem was that he had everything neatly configured in w2k, from FTP to backup his remote server and email server (Mercury) to apache for production purposes. He wanted to port all of it later to linux, but being right smack in the middle of a heavy production cycle, he was willing to wait 8 months or so.
I told hem about the vmware option. He was mulling over it for about a day and then he said, let's go for it. He configured the vmware windoze the same as he had his only OS, and all went as usual, except he could now explore linux while having the other OS at his mouseclick/fingertips.
After a month or so of using the vmware, he noted:
"You now what I don't get? When I was running w2k on my machine, it crashed often. Since I run it under vmware, I had not one crash. Isn't that strange?"
That is the kind of perplexion that I wish many people had. :D
[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: lu666s ]
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The problem with the $199 is that VMWare is worth it, or so everybody is saying. There's no way i could use a fake licence in good conscience. It would be different slightly if the victims of my deceit were Sony or Microsoft par example, but for a decent piece of kit, you can't complain at paying a decent bit of dough.
This is why it distresses me that i can't actually afford $199 right now! I'll have to wait. Of course, i still haven't got linux set up yet, for 1 reason or another, so i'll worry about it when i do...
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Calum, no one is urging you to use a fake license. I think that VMWare guys are actually aware about 'extended' trials and let it go because the more you use it, the more you see its worth and eventually buy it. Otherwise they would use a different expiry paradigm that would disable subsequent runs.
I am an exception, since I bought it before I actually could use it. I don't think that there are many people that go for more than 2 months before buying it. The 30-days should be enough, but if you have an accident and end up in a hospital bed for 2 weeks, it is good to know that you may actually have another chance. BTW, I think that if you write vmware customer support that you did not have a achance to check the program during the trial, they would be more than happy to extend it. How about that? :)
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Im glad to get the info on VM software but $199 is too steep for me i think ill just do a multiboot from drives c: or d:.. But if i can work up the extra cash ill give it a shot.. I was thinking about experimenting on an older computer first with the trial version. Im sure that if it gets such strong recommendations it is probably worth my time. I know i'm kinda new at this level computing but im learning fast. Thanks for the info! ;)