Installing Ubuntu and then Dual Booting XP

Well I finally did it.  I finally took the plunge and installed a linux distro (distribution.)  I went and downloaded Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) Desktop which comes as a “live cd” ISO that when burned and booted from on CD can run with out installing anything.

The install was quick and easy, I didn’t have to know a bunch of technical stuff to get it going and I think the whole process was faster than an XP install.

So why did I make this jump? Recently I either had a man-in-the-middle attack or a vendor lost my informaiton or had a breach or I had a worm/virus on my computer that sent out my debit card information and used it to purchase about $300-$400 worth of stuff before I had the card shut off.  Not knowing exactly where the problem was I took the only option I new I could control, FDISK the machine and start over.  Well I didn’t really fdisk it, (there is data to worry about you know) I rather, disconnected those drives, and found a new drive and did a fresh install of ubuntu.

Figuring I would never go back to XP since I can run XP in a virtual machine on linux I sized the whole ext3 partition to fill the drive. After completing the install of Ubuntu I noticed a few things.

1. my computer seemed to run better.

2. It booted real fast when I actually needed to reboot.

There were some problems in getting the nvidia 7800gts card working right where I could use the real estate of both my 19″ monitors.  I was working with a tech online who gave me some tips, those tips at first got me all messed up, but I learned some good things from those tips that helped later in fixing the video.  I forget who was helping me but the help was well used.  Thank you to whom ever that was.  There were soem other little issues.  I couldn’t just stick a dvd in and play it. (My kids wanted me to watch “Kung Fu Panda” on the computer.  Since we rented the dvd I figured I would just play it.  Well just playing it didn’t work.  I had to go download a bunch of programs (codec’s,etc.) to get it to play. Worked great once I got it to play.

Well I found I couldn’t game in a 3d environment like I wanted to in virtualbox XP, but many people were having success using STEAM in WINE.  Well STEAM and DOD:S loaded great in wine but the video was choppy. Most of that is due to my machine not being beefy enough to handle running a virtual machine smoothly.  Once I saw that I couldn’t play my favorite games, I knew that I would be going back to XP in native install mode.  But wait, you can dual boot xp and ubuntu right?  Well I found out you can.

I used http://tinyurl.com/5zzby6 to do most of the work if not all and found the process quite painless.
I know have an XP and a Ubuntu install on the one HD and both run just fine.

If you have any questions on how to setup any of this stuff, drop by the chat room and find one of us.  There is always someone lurking around that should know the answer.
Until the next time,

Thirteen