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I Want To Dual Boot Debian and XP - The Debian Chronicles
It all started when a friend of mine asked if I wanted his old gaming machine for free. "It has Windows on it though, is that ok?" he added, with a smile on his face. Everyone has heard me rant, or go off "You shouldn't use Windows because...", and, "You should use Open Source Software". I pick my battles and try to show them by example how it is better, but, who ever listened to logic anyway? Darn Friends... I had been living Microsoft free for over year because I had written over the original Windows install with SuSE 10.0 back in November of 2005. You can read about my SuSE exploits on my Switching to SuSE 10 thread. I've not missed having to take care of a Windows desktop but my new job has me working with Windows only programs, and, after a year away from it I needed to get used to using Windows again. My one nagging issue with my old machine was that it was essentially un-upgradeable. I couldn't upgrade the amount of RAM or speed of the processor and the front side bus was a wonderfully slow 66mhz. As a result I was unable to play many of the popular new games that have come out for PC since I bought it. I've always wanted to try gaming under Linux but until now did not have the ability (speed) too. A couple of weeks ago I got around to asking my friend about the computer and he was kind enough to drop it by, I have such good friends. I have to say if this is his "old gaming machine" then I am afraid to see the "new" one because WOW! It is a Cadillac compared to my existing machine. I am going from an AMD 1600+ 1.4g 512mg-RAM 66mhz FSB to an Intel P-4 2.4g and 1.5g-RAM, 533mhz FSB. It is easily the most modern PC I have yet to own. But first I wanted to upgrade a couple of things. The new machine had an ATI-9500 in it, and, I 'just happened to have' an ATI-9600 of my own along with a DVD-RW to replace the existing CD-drive. So, with the new video card and CD-drive installed, I used about half a can of air (am I the only one that blows out the dust in my cases every week?) and was ready to power up, and check out my new computer. The new machine has two hard drives, one 40g and one 60g. My friend had installed Ubuntu along with Windows-XP on the 40g hard drive. It was partitioned into ext/3, swap, ntfs and fat-32 file formats. Ubuntu was on the ext/3, XP on the NTFS and FAT-32 partitions and the 60g hard drive was one big empty fat-32 partition. It made me feel good to know that my friend had actually used one of the Linux CD's that I give out to everyone I know during the holidays. While instant messaging with a friend one evening and I told him about my new computer, what I'd done and that I wanted to put Debian on it (so I can be a "real" Linux user). Only "hardcore" Linux users use Debian or Slackware or Gentoo (Its true!), and I've only used Red Hat and SuSE, meaning I don't know jack. I 'just had to' do this to be taken seriously... After a few chuckles, my friend (and Debian advocate) offered to help me set up my machine and show me all the cool things he knows. I owe my friend a large debt of gratitude, I've learned many new things in the last several weeks thanks to him. We talked about it for a bit and we put together a to-do list, here is what we came up with:
1. I Formatted the 60g HD into ReiserFS using GParted and used the existing 1.6gig swap. GParted is a great tool for re-formatting partitions and entire Hard Drives, like I did.
So in my next installment, or as I like to call it "How I un-installed synaptic and other tales" I will share with you my trials and tribulations in Debian-land. I will tell you how I upgraded KDE 3.5.6 and lost synaptic at the same time, and how I got it back too. Plus I describe all the fun I have been having turning a Debian "net Install" into the desktop of my dreams. |
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Comments (65)
canned air
1 earlier comment in the full thread.
Your very own air blower thing-a-mah-jig!
Have him come over to your house and blow out your computers. :D
In the good old US of A even something as innocuous as canned air becomes suspect. For awhile the younguns had this fad of "huffing", or inhaling canned air to get high. Presumably the propellant does something to their dim little brain cells, or perhaps it's just oxygen deprivation.
You're right TC. Last time I purchased a can at Walmart, they wanted to see an id. Apparently state law prohibits anyone under 21 from buying aerosols.... Afraid they'll be sniffing to get high... Air in this case ;-)
Suicide puffers go from office to office blowing dust of equipment.
By keeping the equipment clean, they increase its uptime, thus reducing the opportunities for people to goof off at the job. At the same time, however, increased productivity makes the company more competitive, leading to pay raises and general satisifaction.
At that point, the terrorists' plot goes a little flat...
If canned air contains freon, then we won't see it sold in this state except on the black market.
The thing that that caught my eye in this thread was the anti-balloon argument from humidity.
Nice warm moist climates like here in Texas, there's very little chance of static zapping electronics, but the chance is still far from zero. I do take precautions, based on hideous experience.
I welcome myself to do whatever needs doing to make the stuff work. I'm not really concerned with too much humidity except when humidity+temp puts the thing outside of spec.
If the air I'm using to clean is I think too wet, then I'll leave the stuff turned off overnight, use a hair dryer, oven, or something silly like that.
OK, I just put a broken 120mm fan in the dishwasher. Didn't help, after 48 hours of air drying bearing is still toast. /me expected as much.
Favorite heat/humidity story: There's this engineer on top of a half-built building in San Antonio calling in July going, "Every time I go out in the sunlight, my portable shuts off." Me goes, "And...?"
Since most systems are rated at around 30% humidity at about 105 degrees F, your portable had better shut down in naked Texas sunlight.
110 degrees F and 60-90% humidity just won't cut it, nor should it.
It doesn't have to cut, if it bludgeons hard enough it's still deadly. Texas heat does exactly that.
I will never forget >110 degrees for 20 days straight while I was in Fort Worth, without airconditioning. Being poor SUCKS.
nope, nor nitrogen (though that would be nice). The canned air I've seen is just cleaned, dehumidified, and compressed.
> "110 degrees F and 60-90% humidity just won't cut it, nor should it."
Used to design custom controls for the food and drug industry. On day's that were 100 deg 90-99% humidity we'd be doing final control panel testing in the shop with all sorts of errors and failures. Drove us all crazy trying to get it to work. When a cooler front came through, within 5 minutes, everything would work perfectly.
I rarely put the side panels on my machines anyway so I just shut them down and just give them a quick couple of shots to keep the dust from building up. I agree with the balloon humidity in general but where I live it is so dry that it might not be an issue here in the summertime. Except for our "monsoon" season the humidity never gets above 15 to 20 percent.
Quoting:Overexposure by inhalation may include nonspecific discomfort, such as nausea, headache, or weakness; or temporary nervous system depression with anesthetic effects such as dizziness, headache, confusion, incoordination and loss of consciousness.
For more info: http://www.blowoff.com/msds/gun_duster.htm
That's not the stuff we're getting here . Just 'air' is listed on the label.
I do have another blow off/cleaner, but that's specifically for cleaning circuits. Ahh... you don wanna know what's in that...
Well phrased
I have a question. If you are duel booting Windows and GNU/Linux, will that be sabers, swords or pistols at thirty paces?
Don't bring a knife to a MBR overwriting fight.
I'll take the pistols...
It is depressing to see mistakes like "decimate" used instead of "devastate", in National Geographic of all places.
I've got $.25 that says the vast majority of "duel boot" are posted only because the spell checker didn't flag it as wrong.
:)
Dual = two separate things together.
Even with the "two antagonistic operating systems" connotation of "duel boot", it doesn't really work, because the two actually work together just fine (ok, Linux works just fine with Windows, rarely the other way around).
But yes, it's basically people coining a phrase, like "co-educational" slowly became "coed."
Now I feel like a dolt!
LOL
Actually, that sounds about right. When Installed that way, Linux almost always always wins out.
Quoting:When Installed that way, Linux almost always always wins out.
You are right about that!
It is to get my Windows chops back that I chose to keep it, that and I am installing software from work on it to test, poke with a stick and kick around.
All the software I am learning and administrating at work is industry specific propitiatory software that only runs on Windows. There are several programs that I know I could get Unix versions of but they are $10,000 and $16,000 per license just for the Windows version. Also the software companies only offer the Windows versions. They would make us pay extra, if not just say they can't do it. Which is the answer I have been getting so far.
The only place I can see me being able to integrate Open Source Software right now is in the database programs and back-ends. I am still kinda new and I want to wait, learn and get a little seniority before I make any recommendations or changes.
First thing is to turn your DBAs on to Postgres and MySQL, Apache, FireFox, stuff like that.
No need to push the Penguin right away. Just suggest that the money spent learning the free database would be less than buying 5 paid database licenses. Those programs all run just fine on Windows, and it's a nearly painless introduction to "quality" over "price".
I know what you mean about the applications vendors. That I think is the biggest barrier to serious Linux adoption, the fact that vendors aren't offering their products on Linux. I cannot imagine why, since Linux represents a far more stable development platform than Windows. Just how much did XP-SP2 _cost_ in terms of rewriting and recertifying every single application in the world? Golly!
Mind-share. People _believe_ they need Microsoft, and therefore they do.
You realize you're not a 'real' Linux user ...
11 earlier comments in the full thread.
http://www.kubuntu.com and cut to the chase.
*ubuntu and Debian are not at odds but there will always be the bad apples, in the bunch. Don't stop eating because rotten apples exist.
Open software collaboration has been working. It's working better than anything else. Bad Apples abound in the Windows camp; for sure.
In your dreams neolx ;-)
Dontchya just looove a good distro war?
Aww... it's all in fun ;-)
To be fair, K/X/Ubuntu probably does rock it's users. Better that have to resort to windows. That said, it may also be saying something about the sophistication of the user.
I forgot to add the disclaimer:
'This user is more than a little biased toward Debian' :D
My desktop was designed around playing one single game, which doesnt have a port to linux and wine wont bring to life, Neverwinter Nights 2. With that in mind it has a nVidia 7950GX2 which is a single slot SLI card. It takes 2 512M video cards and operates them in SLI mode on a single PCI-E slot.
This card however is not something that does well under linux. So imagine my suprise when I installed World of Warcrack under wine and picked up 10 frames per second using only 1/2 of that monster card in a recent install of Ubuntu.
Probably not pertinent to anything, but a great story that I felt like sharing.
A properly set up Debian KDE desktop smokes Kubuntu, and is much easier to mantain. I do support for both and there are far more issues with keeping Kubuntu current.
Debian 4.0 System: 2.6.20-1-686 X: 7.1.1 KDE: 3.5.6 Qt: 3.3.7
Debian can be made fast, but most reviews I've read have said that Slackware is faster out of the box. Red Hat and SuSE aren't even in the same ballpark as those two. Of course, YMMV.
If speed is the major concern, Slack and Arch are 'a tad' quicker than Debian when kernel and apps are compiled specifically for the cpu, but also (to my mind) a lot more hassle to modify and mantain. I've tried them and, it's not worth it for me.
Modify, I'll grant. Debian's universe of packages is unmatched. Maintenance, OTOH, seems largely to be a wash to me, especially now that slapt-get is available (for Slackware, I haven't tried Arch). Again, YMMV.
The speed difference isn't really even worth considering unless you're running older hardware where every cycle counts.
> I've tried them and, it's not worth it for me.
Horses for courses. :)
And, of course, a properly compiled Gentoo system should, in theory, be the fastest of all.
Talk about schizophrenic....
It could be Debian-based (or LSF?), but would have to offer a choice of default desktops. Iceweasel's default homepage would be LXer (unless everyone would rather see MS facts ads from certain other news sites). The editors and TuxChick (gotta have a gal in the crowd) could don speedos and pose around the LXer logo in the Ubuntu circle for the desktop background. The default login sound could be Dino and Fericyde arguing over which distro is best and why. The default screensaver would feature the core readers wearing pirate hats and chasing Steve and Bill around the screen. And we couldn't do without a talking heads icon theme featuring all of the community pop stars (RMS, ESR, Linus, et. al.).
Hey, we all know sex sells. And if y'all think my legs are hot, wait till I take off my shirt! Oh yeah, I can see the headlines now - "hot, barechested preacher puts Linux in millions of homes"
If you could do that I'd convert in more ways than one.
I'm often self-denigrating, so I figured it was time to balance out.
Quoting:Hey, we all know sex sells. And if y'all think my legs are hot, wait till I take off my shirt! Oh yeah, I can see the headlines now - "hot, barechested preacher puts Linux in millions of homes"
As I said before, someone should take a (live) distro, install pornzilla, adblock + g.filterset, binary news reaper, tor, proxy-switcher and a firewall and market it explicitly as "the only safe way to surf for porn on the net". I guarantee millions of new Linux users within a year.
And I did it with a Slackware 11.0 "host system", which I'm sitting in front of right now.
Slackware RULES.
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