Posted on Wednesday 11th of October 2006 at 12:25 in Linux

Are You Scared of Dual Booting Linux?

An excellent question it seems even when my personal experiences are put aside - a friend of mine over in Norway attempted to dual boot everyone's favourite distro (Ubuntu) on his laptop with fairly disastrous results. Specifically, a crashing while managing the partitions created an expensive paperweight. While I doubt this situation isn't reversible (as that isn't the point of this article), I wonder how many people are actually scared of dual booting Linux.

While initial searches of Google don't convey this to be a serious problem or concern I am aware that myself and those around me have experienced problems doing this (theoretically) simple action, mostly with semi-devastating consequences. The commonly available resources discuss how simple a procedure this is, with image heavy tutorials and even video step-by-step guides. I've not seen a step-by-step account of how epically things can go wrong.

ubuntu

Live CD Environment Install
One of my concerns with the latest editions of Ubuntu (I'm unsure of the other distros at this point) are the new installation methods where you boot to the live CD environment and double click an installation icon where you're lead through a GUI installation. I'm curious as to how stable this method is since my Norwegian friend suffered a Dapper Drake related spannerism.

While some people will surely respond saying that you can download an alternate installation disk that uses the traditional text based installer (the one that spooned my system a good while ago...) and I say to those people - that's just not good enough. If you're going to move forwards and create a GUI installation process, it's best to at least integrate a text-only option into that, surely? My time is fairly limited and when I decide to install an operating system I want to do it then, not to be faced by a problem that I cannot solve until my interminably slow broadband finishes downloading another CD.

So What?
What I'm looking for is a bit of a vote on the subject. Have you ever attempted to dual boot Linux - it doesn't have to be a new distro but it needs to be in a real live environment (no Virtual machines guys). Did you have any problems? Let me know!

Where to Vote
You can vote from the homepage, so please go and have your say. Please leave comments on the subject because I'd like to hear from you and see how widespread the problem actually is, or whether me and those around me have been unfortunate/inept.

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Comments

Showing most recent 20 of 76 comments [View all comments]

I’ve installed several desktop linux distros (i.e. ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, freespire, kubuntu) in multiboot mode using WindowsXP as the initial OS. All distros were installed from liveCDs and never had any problems.
Since I’ve been a PCLinuxOS user for several months now (not using the Windows partition at all), with the new Ubuntu release (i.e. 7.10) I’m attempting to multiboot windowsXP + Ubuntu + PCLinuxOS. Hope everything goes smoothly.

Don’t have any fear guys! dual-boot with confidence...

by jellykiller on Wednesday 24th of October 2007 at 17:54

Just download and install VMWare Server (which is FREE)... no need to dual boot!

by Anon on Sunday 9th of September 2007 at 08:39

I have been playing around with dual boot MS and Linux for about 10 years now and it has to be said that generally the problems have been few and far between. As others have said, I have had problems with resizing utilities, but gave up on that route a while back. Generally I tend to leave a block of unpartitioned space when installing windows, and linux has always found this and offered to install into it.
Newer distros have come on in leaps and bounds, so that it is now perfectly possible for novice users to install an os. Mandrake 10.2 is as esy to install as XP, many of my students have loaded this distro as their only os, so we’re getting there.
My advice would be, if you’re going to dual boot, get a second hard drive and install you chosen distro to that. If your going to resize, ghost the hard drive first, or at least take an image back up fist.

by marshon on Thursday 9th of August 2007 at 22:41

I’ve done duel boot with XP and PcLinux os the only problem I had was when I had to reinstall windows. PcLinux os and XP didn’t show up for duel boot. I had to get a live cd go into terminal and redo lilo. I also redid the partition for Linux. I duel boot when I restarted and all my files. I don’t know about what you would need to do with Grub though

by Flatline -^-^-^-^-------- on Tuesday 7th of November 2006 at 15:27

Must read HOWTOs.

There is a HOWTO on "Dual Booting, ie, installing windows XP/2000 on a spare partition with Linux." at

http://linux.coconia.net/
http://m.domaindlx.com/LinuxHelp/ (mirror)

There are also HOWTOs on:

1) Cloning your windows XP/2000 installations using Linux.
2) 3D acceleration for ATI cards (simple procedure, works for SuSE, Mandriva and Debian).
3) accessing and writing to Windows XP (formatted with the NTFS) from Linux.
4) some discussion on the GPL and non-free third party kernel modules.
5) remix those 14 Debian installation CDs as 2 DVDs.
6) compile the worlds best DVD/Movie/Video/MP3 Player and Encoder (MPlayer and MEncoder).
7) the entire book "Linux Device Drivers 3" in HTML format.
by Jade

by John on Friday 3rd of November 2006 at 18:40

There is a HOWTO on "Dual Booting, ie, installing windows XP/2000 on a spare partition with Linux." at

http://linux.coconia.net/
http://m.domaindlx.com/LinuxHelp/ (mirror)

There are also HOWTOs on:

1) Cloning your windows XP/2000 installations using Linux.
2) 3D acceleration for ATI cards (simple procedure, works for SuSE, Mandriva and Debian).
3) accessing and writing to Windows XP (formatted with the NTFS) from Linux.
4) some discussion on the GPL and non-free third party kernel modules.
5) remix those 14 Debian installation CDs as 2 DVDs.
6) compile the worlds best DVD/Movie/Video/MP3 Player and Encoder (MPlayer and MEncoder).
7) the entire book "Linux Device Drivers 3" in HTML format.

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by RosaLanna on Thursday 26th of October 2006 at 03:08

I dual booted XP Pro and Mandrake for about 6 months and then started actively testing various live cd options before finally removing XP from my box entirely. Go figure, the only MS product left in my house is on my kids’ computer that they use to play those annoying Flash games on the net. The only issues I had with dual booting at the time involved toasting the MBR when I had to reinstall XP after numerous crashes. It did not share or play well with others in that regard.

by rbrandnur on Tuesday 24th of October 2006 at 23:32

I am a conservative person. I will never go beyond Win2K+SP2, which I can install over and over from CD.

I never touch the partitions or other contents on the HD of my working system - I know how to use my screwdriver and connect an empty HD when setting up a new system.
In some cases I don’t even touch the working box but rather use another box to build the new system.

I plan the partitioning from scratch, then create all partitions initially empty using available partitioning functions on install floppies or CD’s

I install in the following order: DOS - Win - Linuxes and manually control the assignment of partitions to the systems.

When the newly installed systems are functional I might connect the retiring HD as a data disk to compare installations and copy pieces
Not until long after the new HD has shown colors and proven itself will I consider erasing its predecessor and have it available as a resource the next time again.

by Ingemar on Monday 23rd of October 2006 at 23:01

Actually, it’s perfectly doable to create a multiboot machine. I, for one, am perfectly able to run a mixture of Windows and different Linux distributions on the same computer. This process is perfectly repeatable and understandable, and becomes even more easier with time.

Just remember several simple rules:
* always remember to create copies of your hard disk’s MBR on a floppy (preferably formatted with FAT filesystem for greater compatibility)
* create enough partitions to hold your OS’s and data
* if you have only one NTFS partition, boot off LiveCD and use ntfsresize, calculator and fdisk wisely - to put it short: THINK!!!
* if partitions become clobbered, use testdisk to restore them to a healthy state
* if you intend to run Windows and Linux, install Windows first (that’s the best for this OS)
* if you prefer some specific boot loader to start all other systems, install the boot loader of each OS in the boot record of its partition and not in the MBR, then add them to the boot loader of your choice
* and the most important: do only one step at a time - to put it short: THINK!!!

Cheers,

by SirYes on Sunday 15th of October 2006 at 13:08

I have been dual-booting machines for about 5 years now, and rarely had aproblem. I am currently running Ubuntu Dapper & Vista-RC1 on my main machine, in the past it’s been XP & Beos, XP & SuSE....
The following is my advise for guaranteeing a happy dual-boot experience.

Personally, I would NOT trust any free partitioning software for resizing NTFS Windows partitions, as ive destroyed healthy NTFS partitions using various free tools in the past: its rather hit-and-miss.

Instead I ALWAYS use PartitionMagic for Windows, which has NEVER failed for me.

a) Buy PartitionMagic: yes its commercial, but its not that expensive, esp. if you value your sanity & data ;), and install it under Windows.

b) Shrink the NTFS partition(s), leave the remaining space "empty/unallocated", and reboot Windows to make sure nothing has gone wrong.

c) Boot using your linux cd, and follow the install process till it comes to partitioning. Create your linux partitions and swap space on the "free" space, and format them (my personal preference is ext3).

d) When you reboot, both Windows and linux should be available from the Grub (or Lilo) boot menu.

e) If you want to access the Grub configuration (on most distros), open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst.
If you wish to edit the file, the changes made will be automatically applied upon next boot.

Incidentally, it seems to me that the Vista boot process isnt vastly different to XP’s, so Grub can detect and boot it just fine (this was a huge relief when i installed it recently & then had to re-install Grub;)

by tombowie on Saturday 14th of October 2006 at 20:02

Because of work-related issues (my jobs have always required the use of some software that was relentlessly Windows-only) I’ve always dual booted some form of Linux (Mandrake/Mandriva and now openSUSE) and Windows (98 SE, 2000, XP) since 2001 and never had any problems. The worst issue would be inadvertently overwriting a partition, but all the partitioning tools I’ve used have made that fairly unlikely--you can do it, but you’ve almost got to work at it.

Overwriting the MBR on a Windows reinstall is a pain, but never been a real problem the couple times I had to do it. Mandrake/Mandriva provided a good MBR restore/repair utility on their bootable instal CDs that made it painless. Haven’t had to do it on openSUSE yet (knock on wood...).

by Len Cleavelin on Saturday 14th of October 2006 at 19:41

I side-stepped the problem of re-partitioning when first
trying dual-booting by adding another hard drive to put
linux on. Ideal for first experiments, then as you gain experience you can go for re-partitioning.

by BrianS on Saturday 14th of October 2006 at 01:35

p.s. i feel so much cleaner with my linux computers.

by wing ding on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 22:21

why should linux even be considerate of that stinkin’ windows operating? why does linux play second fiddle and compare itself to garbage microsoft. it seems everytime i read about linux there’s always a reference to god almighty microsoft. linux should come right out and say remove windows from your computer then you can install a fine linux distro. there’s too much emphasis on making linux friendly to windows computers. screw the kool-aid drinkers. i just wiped microsoft off of 2 machines and i didn’t create a backup before i did it. i don’t have restore disks either.

by wing ding on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 22:17

I’ve been configuring multi-boot windows and *nix on ix86 since 1996 in commercial consulting and training environments. It seems new computer users (and many old) jump in and try before researching ALL the issues. I’ve been caught jumping in head first; it’s a great way to learn something inside and out. Sometimes it’s also nice to get the low down before you start and there are many excellent tutorials on multi-boot installations. Know how to use Google?

Here’s a brief run down of multi-boot components a person should know about imho. It’s not a necesarily complete list or in any particular order, just off the top of my head:
Master Boot Record (MBR)
hard drive primary and extended partitions
tools for partition management
formatting & file systems (fat16, fat32, ntfs, ext3, ext2, reiserfs, nfs, smbfs, etc)
boot loaders

Some things to look at before starting an install:
available drivers for ALL hardware
primary install type (desktop, server, both)
install medium (internet, CD, DVD)
shell commands
available login methods

If you have ANY critical information that could be destroyed BACK IT UP. If you don’t know what it means to back up your data, RESEARCH IT! Basically it’s creating a copy of your data. If you’re trying to dual-boot and you want to save data and you ignore this warning or have never abided by it, start. It will save you countless hours of time and frustration.

The OS community is pushing to get linux variants on the desktop in a "reliable" way. I run XUbuntu/WinXP. I’m still testing but after successfully installing then fighting with FC5 on my laptop, I’m back to XUbuntu; by far the simplest and easiest variant I’ve ever installed.

by Scott Lane on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 14:09

I am not afraid of dual booting, as I know not to click "Install" and then "YES I WANT TO ERASE MY WHOLE DRIVE" and I know that I will be asked this before a install. But I also know how exactly computers work, how a boot process works, like booting a rescue system (or DBAN with the autonuke option) over the network (PXE) and similar stuff. People having no clue about computers will be afraid of even putting a linux CD into the drive.
Additionally I want to note that you can forget the survey. You will attract many computer literate people and very few clueless ones, especially now it is on digg, and most computer literate people wont be scared by loading an app into ram keeping their harddrive untouched until mounted.

by Jan on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 13:23

I dual-booted when I first tried Linux (and it was Ubuntu), because I didn’t know anything about Linux at the time and needed a fallback. Honestly, that was probably one of the more complicated things about starting out in Linux as far as installation and whatnot go, but not because it was particularly difficult so much as the rest was easier than I anticipated. Basically, you DO need to know what a "partition" is. Beyond that, I figure you’re all set. I know the live installer had issues pre-release for Dapper, but thought those were fixed, so am guessing your friend either had it before official release or did something odd in the process. (Either way, his machine is FAR from a paperweight, since even wiping all data and reinstalling from scratch fixes that, while being far from ideal.) After moving the partitions around a bit, everything was a breeze, and the Windows installation was automatically detected and added to the boot menu (which I figured I’d have to figure out manually). That was with Hoary, so the text mode install, but I have done the live CD installation on a friend’s computer with no problems (although I still prefer the alternate CD personally). Also, in talking to people about Linux I get a chance to gather data on their conceptions, and in short it seems dual-booting is intimidating not because it’s actually an intimidating process, but more so because a lot of people don’t actually understand the things they work with. Many don’t know the difference between a program, and operating system, and their computer itself, so when you talking about having two OSs, they get confused, and when confused the gut reaction is to also be scared. This is silly, as the only thing to be scared of is losing an afternoon. Data loss shouldn’t be an issue, since you should be regularly making backups of the important things anyway, even on a single-boot system that will stay that way. So in my book, don’t use a computer at all if you don’t know anything about what you’re working with. If you have enough basic knowledge to qualify you to use it with one OS, you’ll be fine trying two.

by Tony on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 13:07

Ok, I thought I would inject some reality here. Like most of the others, I have had no problems. Why? Because I am a highly skilled user. I know that I should image a hard drive before I start in case something goes horribly wrong. I do, and most who have posted here do also. We understand how to follow the instructions, where to find the information, and we probably all have a linux expert in our contact list to call for those .001% of problems we cant fix. But most people arent like us, they don’t clearly see a path to fix any problem that pops up. They see a winding maze of disappointment and frustration and they choose the ’easy’ route. While we might want to show our distain and profess our superior intellect, it is counter productive. Not being one to point out problems without solutions, I have a suggestion. The community needs to build a bulletproof, one button, "go back" installer option that will physically image the entire hard disk, verify it, and save it off to an external device before install. We shouldn’t even give them the option to skip it. Now I know, this is an act of charity for the ’novice’ user since WE don’t need it. But lets form a consensus here my friends, the n00bs need it. And for the rest of us, it might actually save us from our own arrogance during our next laptop install...:)
I don’t assume this is a new idea, so if someone knows where it is being done, please post. Perhaps we can get the Ubuntu developes to make it standard in a future release. -BrianHoliday - Digg user.

by BrianHoliday on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 10:58

No, I am not frightened of doing multi-OS boots. The only difficulty I encounter is the "recovery partitions" included these days by the OEMs (many thanks, Microsoft). Moving those around, or deleting them entirely can completely disable recovery in the event Windows goes South. My previous Compaq had a "recovery CD" that consisted solely of a 20K batch file that pulled the images from a hidden partition immediately after the Windows partition (hda2 in Linux parlance). Resizing the Windows partition for dual boot caused hda2 to become hda3 and the recovery batch file died with an error to contact Technical Support. So, no problem massaging drive partitions and multi-OS installs (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Freespire currently reside on my drive) but the "recovery" options of OEMs are a right pain in the posterior.

by Egon Spengler on Friday 13th of October 2006 at 08:54