On Friday, March 04, 2011 12:45:37 Mark Wallace wrote: > You've got me back on my soap box about dual booting. It has a number > of crucial problems. > > 1) Because you can reach into the Windows partition to get things, you > can also by mistake corrupt your windows install.
The flip-side is that you can also fix Windows binaries that normally Windows won't let you modify due to the file being in use. So for instance one very typical thing to do is to use a Knoppix CD to scan an NTFS drive for viruses with Clamav, or look through a non-booting drive for data to recover before doing a Windows wipe/reinstall. So regardless of the fact that it's *possible* to corrupt Windows if you delete/alter the wrong file, there are also good reasons to be familiar with transferring data to/from Windows NTFS partitions, too. > 2) If you have downloaded a windows virus while on line in Linux, you > won't know it until you by mistake put it on the Windows partition where > it might get "executed" or shall we say, execute your system. My six > year old is no longer allowed to go on line in XP because it rarely > takes him more than two weeks to download some toolbar or free game that > screws up my whole hard drive with a virus. Your Linux system can also get the virus if you've got Wine installed. What you're describing is possible but I've yet to see anyone get a virus that way. Additionally there are several versions of XP, only some of which allow for privilege separation -- for instance my understanding is that XP "home" edition runs everything as the super-user, so if you were running that this would easily explain how your six year old could corrupt it so easily. > 3) Maintaining two platforms is twice as much work. It's actually three > when Microsoft starts doing things like modifying their boot loader > which turns around and wipes out Grub. That happened to me.) Your > mounting issue is the third level of work. You wouldn't be having this > problem if your were just running Ubuntu. Yes, any re-installation of the NTFS boot loader will wipe out Grub, so when dual-booting you do need to know how to recover Grub and how to re-install it. Microsoft doesn't play nice with the boot loaders on other OS's -- it seems they don't even try, and it seems to be on purpose. That's not Ubuntu's fault, and unfortunately there's no good solution to this other than Microsoft choosing to stop being "a boot loader bully". > 4) If you corrupt one platform badly enough, you might wind up having to > kill disk your hard drive and start over. If the Windows platform is XP > and you upgrade it faithfully, that will take hours, even on a broadband > connection. I got a Windows virus once that stopped my anit-virus > software and prevented my system restore from restoring. It's a lucky > thing that I had just backed up my data. I now keep my data on jump > drives and back up to A Drive, Last time I've seen this in person was a boot sector virus back in the early to mid 90's that a friend got that were going around at the time. I don't understand what this has to do with Linux <-> Windows file sharing, though. > 5) About the only things that I can't do Linux only are to upgrade my > GPS and run Windows proprietary software. If you are into heavy gaming, > that would be a problem. Wine only runs low graphics programs very > slowly and often can't find USB ports when you most need them. IT also > makes the income tax software useless. Some Windows games run surprisingly well under Wine on Linux. Deus Ex, for instance -- runs perfectly. Running Windows in a VM is able to solve needing to run some Windows applications, but occasionally running Windows natively is the only foolproof solution. However realistically this is about sharing data between partitions and thus between Windows/Linux on the same machine, rather than being "whether letting Windows be or not to be" on that box. > 6) Linux is different and the best way to make maximum use of it's > superiority is to be familiar with the Linux programs. Some of them are > very good but because they are free, there is nobody out trumpeting > their features. You might have something really good available for > free on Linux while you are using some out of date Windows program only > because you are familiar with it. If you were Linux only, you would > pick up the "savvy" that you need to do things in Linux faster. > > If I had to use Windows, I would put it on a separate hard drive and > open the tower and unplug one hard drive and plug in the other, I have > had that much bad experience with duel booting. Dual booting isn't for everybody. [Heh -- 'duel' booting, indeed. Nice one.] -- 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 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6 May 4 - Inkscape
