Submitted by If you’ve ever asked for advice on how to set up dual-booting, you’ve doubtlessly come across online tutorials that only tell part of the story. You probably ended up spending all weekend researching the intricacies of adjusting partition sizes, boot loaders, installing operating systems in the right order, and other fun topics. Well, we have good news: APCMag has put together the definitive dual-booting guide between Vista and Ubuntu.
The Definitive Guide to Dual-Booting Vista and Linux/XP
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Eugenia Loli
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“You probably ended up spending all weekend researching the intricacies of adjusting partition sizes, boot loaders, installing operating systems in the right order, and other fun topics.”
Far as I know, you install Windows first, you install Linux second.
The Linux bootloader picks up the Windows, puts it on the boot menu.
All done.
Partition sizes? Well, if you were dumb enough to make your whole drive one big C: drive for the benefit of Windows, you deserve to have to redo it.
ALL systems should have multiple partitions, with the OS on one and your data on the other(s).
In fact, ALL systems should have multiple DRIVES, with an OS on one, other OS’s on their own, and data separated from any OS.
Save yourself a lot of grief in the future when Windows blows up and has to be reinstalled by separating your OS and data.
I suppose Vista – like most Windows – has decided to be even MORE of a bitch in not wanting to dual boot with another OS.
I mean, yesterday, I tried to use IE 7 to go to the Mozilla site to download Firefox for a client.
Guess what? IE7 would NOT go to the Firefox site. It just sat there. At first I thought it must be that the Firefox site was overloaded. Then I got suspicious. So I downloaded Portable Firefox from another site – which worked fine. And Portable Firefox went directly to the main Firefox site and downloaded the latest Firefox, no problem at all.
I couldn’t believe it. IE7 is PROGRAMMED not to go to the Firefox site (or do so efficiently anyway). I think it has something to do with the stupid “phishing checker”.
Tell me again how Microsoft is all about “interoperability”, Bill.
I don’t think IE 7 is programmed not to go to the Firefox site, the computers where I have it installed works just fine, perhaps you’re a bit paranoid?
In the age of Virtualization why not just run Linux inside a Virtualization solution or vice versa instead of dual booting pain?
I have newer Core 2 Duo VT boxes from Intel and running Linux as guest is pretty fast. I don’t think i will ever go to dual booting now.
Edited 2007-01-24 19:46
Mostly because I have an Athlon XP 2800+, not everyone can afford a new dual core, and not all OS’s give you full graphical goodness in a VM. Dual booting gives you a true representation of what an OS runs like, and it is far easier on the hardware
Huh. I have a 2800 as well, I think. well it runs at about 2Ghz anyway. I’ve also only got 1Gb of ram, but I can happily run Ubuntu 610 + Apache + MySQL + Gnome + X (OK, no beryl – but also no Aero), INSIDE VMWare while watching a DVD in the host Windows XP OS.
I’d say that that was a fairly acceptable situation.
Acceptable, but with my config, I can run beryl with my system when I run Kubuntu, which rocks, and I can run Aero. That’s wicked
In the age of Virtualization why not just run Linux inside a Virtualization solution or vice versa instead of dual booting pain?
I don’t know if it’s yet possible to run Windows side-by-side with another OS (including another Windows install), but as far as running an OS in a virtual machine, I don’t do it for two reasons:
1. You don’t give native speeds.
2. If your purpose is to test hardware drivers, it’s hard/impossible to do that when all hardware devices are emulated.
I just finished that article, and while the intructions we’re clear and useful, I think the real wins were Finding out about Gpartd and EasyBCD, I didn’t know gpartd was available as a liveCD and I had no idea that EasyBCD existed at all, both look to be wicked.
A couple of the HOWTOs (and the “Why dual-booting Vista is a pain” article) talk about modifying Vista bootloader options, but the Vista-then-Ubuntu HOWTO sets things up just how I’ve always set up Windows to boot from GRUB. What gives?
Does Vista Install itself to the MBR only if there’s partitions already there?
I’ve been looking for a guide that explains how to install dual-boot XP and Ubuntu, but on a machine that already has Ubuntu. All the guides I’ve found assume you’re starting with XP. The APC guide looks very good but it only shows how to go from Ubuntu only to Ubuntu + Vista, not Ubuntu + XP. Does anyone know of an Ubuntu => Ubuntu + XP guide? Thanks.
It’s not nearly as easy.
The best way to do it (as far as I know) is to:
create a Ubuntu boot floppy/cd.
use GParted (in Ubuntu) to free up at least 10GB HDD space
Then install Windows XP normally to that free space.
Finally, boot Ubuntu from the boot disk, and re-install grub after adding Windows to the boot menu.
You could also try WINGRUB.