[Lancaster] Dual Booting

[Darren Poulson]

Martyn Welch said:
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> - ------ Original message ------
> On Wednesday 20 Jul 2005 11:10, Ken Hough wrote:
>
>> Without additional software, XP (ie NTFS) partitions can be a bit of a
>> problem. AFAIK, Linux can mount NTFS and can read from it, but is not
>> guaranteed to be safe for writing.
>>
>
> That was true last time I read about it.
>
> This also suggests that also to be true:
>
> http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/status.html#ntfsdriver
>
>> I should add that I've had no personal experience of XP and have no
>> intention of gaining any.
>>
>
> I try to stay as far away from it as possible at all times.

Wise choice.

>
>> One of the advantages of dual booting Linux + MS Windows has been that
>> Linux can mount and read/write MS partitions, specificaly FAT16 and
>> FAT32. I've successfully set up quite a few dual booting systems with
>> Win98.
>
> XP will also read FAT partitions. I have tended to suggest that those who
> wish
> to run both systems have a FAT partition for them to store stuff on that
> they
> require to be accessable by both OSes. This is a bit f a hack as FAT can't
> store Linux file permissions and thus the whole partition has to be made
> accessable as one user/group combination, not the best on multi-user
> systems.
>

Or, you could install some ext2 drivers for windows (xp/nt/2k) and access
your ext2 formatted partitions under windows. Not sure if it supports
ext3, or how well it all works. I only have to use XP for work and I
thankfully don't have to admin it.

http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/projects/projects.htm#ext2fsd

> Add to that the fact that FAT is vastly inferior to EXT3 or ReiserFS in
> terms
> of data security (EXT3 and ReiserFS are journalised file systems).
>

Not to mention, sloooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww........


>> It can work well, but there can be some serious problems if
>> (when) things go wrong with the Microsoft side of things. There are ways
>> to manage/minimise problems, but IMHO, this is not made clear enough by
>> any of the major Linux distributors.
>>
>
> There seems to be less and less to gain by dual booting these days anyway.
>
> There is very little I can't do satisfactoraly on a Linux system
> (natively),
> there are also quite a few good tools for utilising software created for
> win32 under Linux, both free and proprietory. OK, I'm not a gamer, but
> there
> are native ports available for a good few very popular games.
>

And transgaming cedega, a commercial fork of wine for gamers, a lot of
windows games will work. At least the more popular do (latest version
supports World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Steam, etc.

Tho this has the downside of not letting the games companies know that
people play games under linux.


> Needless to say, without installing extensive quantities of third party
> applications, which aren't updated though a centralised patch management
> system, I find windows to be a very restrictive environment to work with.
> I
> hence try to avoid it at all costs.

Don't blame you or anyone for doing this!

>
> Martyn
>
> - --
> Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)
>
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