[sf-lug] dual-boot

[Akkana Peck]

Rick Moen writes:
> We've recently discussed this exact problem on CABAL's Conspire mailing
> list.  Using VMware's p2c tool[1], you can image the preload, and then that
> image can run in VirtualBox or VMware (maybe other hypervisors, too).

Nice! Thanks for that tip. I will try it when I next find myself
with a new Windows laptop, which might be fairly soon. (For now,
I'm doing okay with my Asus 1015E, a little 2.5-lb 10" screen
laptop that came with Ubuntu. Way smaller than what was being
discussed, but I care more about small 'n' light than about compute
power when I'm traveling. Only problem with the Asus is the trackpad,
which is terrible and has required a lot of working around.)

> That aside, personally, IMO you _don't really own_ any OS you cannot
> reinstall when/if the hard drive fails.

Certainly true. OSes on disk can be backed up to other media, either
inside or outside a VM; but I've never had to restore a Windows OEM
backup and was never 100% confident a restore would work. And of
course your point about bundled crapware is also true, and would be
annoying for someone who needed Windows more than just occasionally and
briefly. (Dealing with a Samsung phone has given me an appreciation
of the crapware factor so many Windows users put up with.)

> Of course, you could still have done virtualisation the _icky_ way, with
> the Microsoft OS run as the native software, and Linux in the VM.  But
> using the tool I mentioned averts the need for that sad choice.

Ewwww.

My husband does that on his Mac, with Linux running in Virtualbox
under OS X, and Linux in Crouton on a Chromebook. He's happy with it,
and it makes sense if you want a lot of the features of the host
OS -- and if you trust the host OS, which would be my biggest
problem with running Linux on a Windows host as my main OS.

        ...Akkana