Your last line is the clincher. I found duel booting to be twice as
much work and, when I get done with both Windows and Gnome, they wind up
looking like Windows 98 anyway.
The programs that I am talking about were written for Windows 95, reduce
the screen resolution when they start and probably he wouldn't know the
difference. They have a copy protect on them so that they only run with
the CD in the drive. I tried to speed up their running in Wine by
copying the cd contents to the drive, but the program kept looking for
the drive, anyway.
It also takes me a full day to install XP from a blank drive because it
is an 8 year old program with tons of security upgrades and teaser
editions of programs that no longer exist. It's simply too much ancient
history.
But that pentium 2 system would run the current distro of Linux, just
very slowly. I am tempted to put Ubuntu in it instead, use it for word
processing, and send him into his sister's room for the old games.
There are strict orders that he is never to go online in Windows,
because he doesn't know what those sites could be doing to him.
The vulnerability that the virus finds might not exist in Vista, we are
afraid to try.
Chris Knadle wrote:
On Tuesday 09 February 2010 12:18, Mark Wallace wrote:
I put Windows back into one system so that my son could play some old
games from his sister's youth and he picked up the same virus twice in
four weeks. I won't let him go online in Windows.
I wonder if you are more vulnerable to windows viruses if you duel boot
(because you are reaching across the partitions to get things) or if you
use Wine (it might run a windows virus)
Getting files from Windows onto Linux across partitions isn't much of a
problem /unless/ you're /executing/ programs that were copied over. Wine
will in fact run some Windows malware, and I've had it happen on a machine I
support.
As much as I like VirtualBox, some Windows games do not run well within a
Windows VM under it. For instance running MD2K under VirtualBox runs the 3D
part just fine, but the mouse response is so bad that the game is completely
unplayable -- there's a large "dead zone" that is immediately followed by
oversensitivity, making it very difficult to keep the mouse pointer within
the game anywhere except the edges of the screen. So... you can try
VirtualBox and hopefully you have better luck than I had, but don't count on
it.
My recommendation would be to dual-boot and to remove networking support from
Windows so that your son /cannot/ go online within it. This is not a
recommendation I like making, as there is a natural tendency to want to
do "everything" within one OS if possible.
-- Chris
Chris Knadle
[email protected]
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Mar 3 - Sahana and 7 Years of MHVLUG Celebration
Apr 7 - Nagios
May 5 - Android
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Mar 3 - Sahana and 7 Years of MHVLUG Celebration
Apr 7 - Nagios
May 5 - Android
