[OwlingSounds]

Hi all, I'm currently using VMware on my laptop, and am thinking of changing to dual boot. My system is

HP Pavilion G6 - 1004SA - 15.6 inch Laptop (AMD Phenom II Quad-Core P960, AMD Radeon HD 6470, RAM 4GB, HDD 750GB, Windows 7 Home Premium)

and I would be running Ubuntu. Can anyone advise about this? The reason behind it is that VMWare seems to slow my computer down too much. Is dual boot going to be any better? Any information is appreciated

[modi123_1]

Well yes there will be a performance difference. One option has an OS operating inside an OS and sharing resources, the other gives it full access to the resources.

How about throwing more ram at it?

[BetaWar]

Personally, I would go for the VM route, I enjoy having things easily backed up (and I mean the entire OS - via snapshots). I am actually considering changing suping a laptop up (with 8+ GB RAM and 1TB+ HDD) then installing a lightweight OS (like Arch) and simply running VMware on it with Windows in a VM (I will be able to give it a considerable amount of RAM then -- like 6 GB).

I think it would just be the easier way to accomplish things -- though if you want to game on your laptop dual-boot is probably the better way to go.

[OwlingSounds]

Hmm.. Probably will go down the Dual-boot route; most if not all of the stuff I do on the linux platform will be uploaded to a server anyway and all my windows stuff is on external HDD's. As for getting a 1TB HD 8gb RAM super machine, budget is gonna kill that thought before it's started lol.

Thanks for the pointers

[modi123_1]

I have no idea why you need a terabyte hard drive - just bump the ram. I have about 8gb of ram on a windows 7 machine and I am running two XP vms and one linux at the same time.

[Creecher]

I tried dual booting before switching to Linux full time. I found out that more often than not I would boot into Linux more than I would Windows, which I used only for games. Now I just run Linux full time and play games inside Wine

[NeoGreen]

I had a laptop running dual boot for a while, but switched to VM's because I had easier access to both OSes at the same time.

[Lemur]

You have to choose between full or partial utilization of resources. Full, dual boot. Part (and can handle it) VMware.

[AlbuquerqueApache]

I have never used it, but I see alot of commercials for VMware fusion which I believe allows you to run simulataneous OSes. Thats a way to go. A less expensive way to go is to use Virtualbox. Dual booting is ok to and WUBI "(Windows Ubuntu Installer) makes it super easy.

[OwlingSounds]

AlbuquerqueApache, on 15 December 2011 - 08:42 AM, said:

I have never used it, but I see alot of commercials for VMware fusion which I believe allows you to run simulataneous OSes. Thats a way to go. A less expensive way to go is to use Virtualbox. Dual booting is ok to and WUBI "(Windows Ubuntu Installer) makes it super easy.

Yeah, I've been using VirtualBox, it's a nice piece of software. I've opted to just use Cygwin and the XServers (sounds like an experimental sci fi band) and SSH into my server for the moment. I'm considering setting up a dual boot at some point soon though.

[SixOfEleven]

I'm another for VMs. If you can bump up you system up to 8GB you'll find a lot better performance of your Linux machine. It also depends on how much memory you've assigned to your Linux VM. I've found 512MB-1GB pretty good for a Linux machine, even one that is doubling as a server. I've been experimenting with PHP/MySQL and instead of doing a dual boot I opted for a Linux VM. As BetaWar said, it's a lot easier to back up a VM and revert to a previous state than if you mess up a real machine. I also find VMs great for surfing the web and you plan on downloading stuff you're unsure of. You get a virus on a VM it is no big problem, just revert to a previous state. No loss of data or time trying to sanitize your system.

[mrloserskid]

yes dual booting is much better on performance.
but much more risky.
if you are new to dual booting and want ubuntu use there windows installer. and to remove ubuntu just uninstall it.
If you want to do it professional boot ubuntu via disk or usb and install it along side windows.
what could go wrong
you could accidently format the ubuntu partition and screw up the mbr. repairable but a pain
you could corrupt windows if it has to be resized.( i recamend resizing windows from windows first)
good luck

[turboscrew]

mrloserskid, on 17 April 2012 - 06:41 PM, said:

if you are new to dual booting and want ubuntu use there windows installer. and to remove ubuntu just uninstall it.

Do that anyway. Especially, if, like me, you have machine with pre-installed Windows and no installation DVD. Just the installation partition on HD.

The nice thing with dual-boot is that if windows gets into trouble and doesn't start up properly,
you can almost always boot to Linux and go to net to find tools for fixing the windows. Also, mounting Windows disks visible to Linux is simple and often done by default.

If you want to do dual boot, check that you have option to install the bootloader somewhere else but MBR. I used to have Ubuntu/Vista dualboot, but I had to use the alternate installation CD for being able to install the boot loader into the beginning of the Linux root partition.

Then I used EasyBCD to add the Linux boot loader into the Vista boot manager.

This post has been edited by turboscrew: 18 April 2012 - 03:49 AM

[modi123_1]

Quote

Especially, if, like me, you have machine with pre-installed Windows and no installation DVD. Just the installation partition on HD.

Please tell me you are making the one time install dvds the moment you get done with your first ten minutes of play time on a new box, right?

[turboscrew]

modi123_1, on 18 April 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

Quote

Especially, if, like me, you have machine with pre-installed Windows and no installation DVD. Just the installation partition on HD.

Please tell me you are making the one time install dvds the moment you get done with your first ten minutes of play time on a new box, right?

I have done the rescue disks, but they are not the same thing as the real installation media.
The rescue disk can only set the box up as it was first installed. All your stuff will be gone.
Also, the rescue doesn't seem to have the lower level fixing tools. I had to download a Vista boot CD from the net to be able to run chkdsk or fixboot. (BTW, you know what happens to linux boot put on MBR when you do that? - Thus windows boot manager on MBR)

Also, I only have DVD, and I can't burn an 11 GB image, if you mean that.

This post has been edited by turboscrew: 18 April 2012 - 07:05 AM