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1336

Ubuntu & Win XP Dual boot; Open office and Firefox /Thunderbird

1336 points posted to Linux, Operating Systems - Multiboot, Desktops and Laptops by bsteff 02/20/07

Sell desktops (and yes laptops) with dual boot of Ubuntu AND Win XP. My particular work environment cannot tolerate Vista and I don't like the control Microsoft is attempting to exert over my PC. Consumers are NOT mindless idiots!!! GEt rid of DRM. I will gladly pay for digital content and I will not sell/give it to a friend or acquaintance (read pirate/thief). GWA is bad enough with threats from Microsoft to crank up the pressure on non-genuine PC's. I am a physician and I control, to a large extent, at my hospital system what type of software we get in the form of PACS (computerized x-ray digital image viewing on local PC's - thin client) Almost all of imaging is now digital.

The threat of Microsoft DRM degrading images used for the critical diagnosis of patients is intolerable such that we are exerting considerable pressure on vendors to provide clients that run under open source. Why open source? Simplyu because it puts us back in control. If images are degraded and critical diagnoses missed, we docs and our patients are going to pay the price. Ubuntu, and other GUI's of LInux (such as Xandros) can let us avoid this. I run Ubuntu routinely and find it dependable and easy to use. I can trust it. Microsoft has lost my last shred of trust with Vista and its DRM and driver situation.

On another front, we in medicine are under tremendous pressure to cut costs. For a faculty of over 400 at my medical school and staff of about 1500, the cost of MS Office is tremendous. Open Office Org. software is a great help in this regared and even has features that MS Office does not offer. MS has lost our trust. We will probably all use Open Office Org in the future - so why not offer it as loaded at purchase time. I would be willing to pay a nominal fee, say $30-50 for the loading up of the software on my PC so htat i can use it immediately when I receive it.

Dell should know that the loading of all the JUNK software that comes on my PC's from Dell is a Large factor in my reluctance to order new PC's at shorter intervals, no matter what the technical hardware advances.

Brad A. Steffler, MD
Medical School Professor

philrio
04/03/07		 I currently have a Dual boot XP / Kubuntu AMD 64 bit laptop - I installed the Linux myself in about 15 minutes I was in dual boot heaven. Too bad the Windows OS is only 32 bit, but I rarely use it anyway. I have been creating dual, tri and quad boot systems for several years. I highly recommend it for educational institutions.
fshero
08/26/07		 Great submission, bsteff.

If the trend of Linux usage increasing continues, I think that more distros will be offered by Dell. Now, I envisage that the choice of operating systems will be confusing to home users (even some business users). Therefore I think that the default operating system choice should be as follows:

Dual boot Windows XP with Ubuntu (latest stable version). The ext3 partition for Ubuntu should be 20GB regardless of the size of the hard disk, and set aside about 1GB for a swap partition. In Ubuntu, the ntfs-3g package should be installed and configured. Ubuntu should be the default OS.

20GB is probably enough for all the software a typical user would want to install in Ubuntu. The ntfs-3g will allow Ubuntu to access the Windows NTFS partition. There should _not_ be any proprietary program installed in Windows XP allowing access to the ext3 partition -- I imagine that this would compromise the security of the Ubuntu installation and the data on that partition.

I believe that this configuration as default is fair: users can benefit from the superior security and stability of GNU/Linux, and still use Windows XP for proprietary programs they need to use, and for playing games. It will be simple to use Windows XP: just select it in the boot-up menu (GRUB).
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