I also use a VM to run windows-only apps. I have found it flexible and pretty easy to use. The one drawback is the performance loss. Since you run 2 OSes simultaneously, you'll need twice the RAM that you're comfortable running one OS on. Also, the processor architecture is emulated on a VM, so it's probably not the best way to do computationally intensive stuff...not a problem for what I use my VM for and probably not for you either. If you've got a reasonably fast machine and some spare RAM, (I run XP, which requires a lot less RAM than vista would) I recommend you try out VirtualBox. It's available in the Ubuntu repositories.
As for the partitions, I would use NTFS just because I have no experience using an ext3 driver under windows and I've had good luck with NTFS support under linux. I do know that you can mount an unclean NTFS partition by passing the correct force options to mount or editing your /etc/fstab (usual disclaimer about filesystem corruption). --Isaac Huan Truong wrote: >Hi everyone, > >I have two OSes installed on my laptop, Ubuntu (hardy) and Vista, >which is set up to dual-boot on my machine (I currently have some >courses on MS Office and the likes so no wonder I have to keep Vista). >I want to access some documents on both OSes - so I plan on create a >partition to store my data and music... > >The last time my solution was to create an ext3 partition and have >ext2fsd to install the ext3 driver on Vista and access that ext3 >partition on Vista, but there were 2 limitations: 1, I can't execute >files which are larger than 2MB on that partition (it threw out an >error, device malfunction or something, but when I copy that file to >another partition it ran fine again) 2, If linux was not properly shut >down the driver would refuse to mount. > >I thought about formatting the partition as NTFS but linux (ntfs-3g) >will refuse to mount my partition if windows is not properly shut >down. > >My last resort was to format the partition as FAT32 but I could not >store any files which are larger than 4GB. This is so inconvenient >because I have some DVD ISO files to store. > >Any suggestions to my problem? Thanks in advance. > >- Huan, Truong > >----------------------------------------------------------------- >To get off this list, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] >with Subject: unsubscribe >----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with Subject: unsubscribe -----------------------------------------------------------------
