Flutterby™! : Okay 2011-02-22 03:26:05.734204+00

Okay

2011-02-22 03:26:05.734204+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Okay, Microsoft has made it too hard to have Windows coexist with Linux on this new machine: Buh-bye, Windows!

Wasn't this your "Deal at the Microsoft Store". You bought it from Microsoft. Do you think they'd sell a machine so cheaply without having Windows embedded in the box so tightly that you would just give up? Based on your normal billing rate, how much did those recovery DVD cost?

I would have either ordered a blank hard drive to stick in the machine when it arrived or just wiped the drive that came with it, never even booting up. Unless, like me, you typically just live with what comes on the machine...

That said, I put Win7 Pro on my Samsung netbook this weekend. It's much snappier than WinXP Pro. But it's intended to serve exactly two purposes: travel browser/entertainment box and ActionScript development (so Ubuntu's going on it in some fashion ASAP).

There were four partitions, an XP(!) one and a Windows 7 one, and two boot partitions. All four were primary partitions(!!!). The Windows 7 one was smack-dab in the middle of the disk. I deleted the XP one, shrank the Windows 7 one, and went to install Xubuntu.

GPartEd wasn't running because the Xubuntu live CDs don't have the Gnome libraries (probably should have just gone and downloaded the straight Ubuntu CD). And I don't know if GPartEd knows enough about NTFS and the Windows 7 boot process to get all that crap right anyway.

The partitioner in the installer couldn't move the existing partitions, and because the other 3 partitions were primary partitions, could only use one of those two empty spaces.

And when I try to run VirtualBox, I'm getting a crash from the Windows 7 recovery disk that this isn't a 64 bit machine, and I don't see the settings that people on the net recommend for fixing that in my VirtualBox settings anywhere, which I assume means that the laptop chipset doesn't support it.

So, yeah, it's nice to have as a backup, but the reality is that when I need it I'll either use my desktop box, or buy another Windows development machine. But for regular usability, I don't need it.

Curious, I assume it was Windows 7, what made it hard to coexist? We may need to buold a Win7/Ubuntu development system soon and I wonder what the pitfalls might be.