Switching to Linux: Why Dual-booting is Best
Author: Dan R
With the user-friendly Linux distribution Ubuntu gaining popularity at an astounding rate, you may be considering making the move from Windows to Linux. If you are, then you will have wondered how you will work and play without the applications and games you use every day in Windows.
About the Author:
Dan R provides tech support to the Green Bay area via Green Bay Tech Support
With the user-friendly Linux distribution Ubuntu gaining popularity at an astounding rate, you may be considering making the move from Windows to Linux. If you are, then you will have wondered how you will work and play without the applications and games you use every day in Windows.
Windows applications can be run in Linux, just not natively. You have two main options: Emulation and Virtualization. Neither are as effective as dual-booting but I will explain them here and their drawbacks.
Emulation allows you to run Windows applications through a "translation layer" which tricks the applications into thinking they are running on Windows. Although great advances have been made by the WINE Project and commercial offshoot, Cedega, many applications are still unsupported. Support for certain applications may even vary depending on your hardware configuration.
Virtualization takes running Windows applications on Linux a step further and is capable of running an entire Windows (or any other) operating system straight from your Linux desktop. With the free application VirtualBox, you can create a “virtual machine” and install any version of Windows you wish onto it.
A virtual machine is switched on and off exactly like a normal PC, except the entire operating system runs inside a window on your Linux desktop. You may then install any Windows applications you wish into the virtual machine and use them as you normally would.
Running applications natively in Windows, via a virtual machine, is far more reliable than running them through a translation layer, but virtualization has its drawbacks too.
When you run Windows in a virtual machine you are effectively running two operating systems, simultaneously, on one computer. This has obvious performance drawbacks. Although most office-type applications could be run this way, if your office insists on a particular piece of Windows-specific software, performance issues and lack of DirectX support severely hampers game applications.
The only way to successfully run all your Windows applications at their full capacity is to install Windows and Linux as dual-boot operating systems.
Dual-booting is the process of installing two operating systems side-by-side, to be run independently. By this method you will be presented with a menu listing your operating systems when you switch on your computer. this allows you to choose the OS most suitable for the tasks at hand, be it work or gaming.
I personally run Ubuntu 7.04 and Windows XP as a dual-boot system. I mostly use Ubuntu for day-to-day tasks and run Windows XP purely for gaming. This way, dual-booting grants me access to the best features of both operating systems and allows me to use my computer to its full potential.
About the Author:
Dan R provides tech support to the Green Bay area via Green Bay Tech Support
Labels: dual Boot, Linux, operating Systems, os, windows
This entry was posted
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 2:44 PM.
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Thank you for your article
by Sama
http://wwwsolfware.blogspot.com/
Your blog is excellent!
Please, send me the photo of your keyring and the link of your blog,
I'll publish in my blog!
Thank you
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"Tender, celebratory, joyous, painful, heart-breaking at times-- I found myself thinking about ways of communication." -Sara
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It's so nice for me to have found this blog of yours, it's so interesting. I sure hope and wish that you take courage enough to pay me a visit in my PALAVROSSAVRVS REX!, and plus get some surprise. My blog is also so cool! Don't think for a minute that my invitation is spam and I'm a spammer. I'm only searching for a public that may like or love what I write.
Feel free off course to comment as you wish and remember: don't take it wrong, don't think that this visitation I make is a matter of more audiences for my own blogg. No. It's a matter of making universal, realy universal, all this question of bloggs, all the essential causes that bring us all together by visiting and loving one another.
You must not feel obliged to come and visit me. An invitation is not an intimation. Also know that if you click on one of my ads I'm promised to earn 8 cents for that: I would feel happy if you did click it, but once again you're totaly free to do what ever you want. I, for instance, choose immediatly to click on one of your ads. To do so or not, that's the whole beauty of it all.
I think it's to UNITE MANKIND that we became bloggers! Don't see language as an obstacle but as a challenge (though you can use the translater BabelFish at the bottom of my page!) and think for a minute if I and the rest of the world are not expecting something like a broad cumplicity. Remenber that pictures talk also. Open your heart and come along!!!!!
Hi,
Just dropped by from sea to shing sea and was wondering if you like the new dual mac's. I have loved the unix strength of the old OS X and now with the ability to boot in windows you get everything. (PS I am primary a linux user for biochemistry work) but have moved most of my analysis over to my Mac laptop.
John.
Great subject.We all have pc problems from different makes.
Thanks for your work and have a good weekend
Hey , buddy its not office thing as we can do word & all those things on Open Office that they are giving. Its actually the biggest problem that i had seen is drivers . All Hardware Vendors are not giving the exact drivers for Ubuntu & except this what i have review is Ubuntu Rocks , & even the best part is they send you Free Copy of their Operating System, not like Vista , thats too expensive & need more expensive hardware to buy , I think
Ubuntu has to market itself more .
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