Ken McGuire

A Weekend For Operating Systems

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Ken McGuire

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In between the football for the weekend I’ve set aside a little bit of time to flex the operating sytem muscles after picking up a copy of Partition Magic.

After downloading a copy of the latest Ubuntu release (700mb iso) and I’m currently in the process of picking up Windows Vista Beta 2. Having refused torrent downloads and cracked offers spread across the internet, it will be interesting to see how Vista shapes up. I know there’s issues with certain Adobe products but hopefully all goes well.

Anyone considering installing either OS I would seriously suggest partitioning your HD, if not for practical hardware reasons, then at least to keep your sanity if you decide to overwrite your existing copy of XP or Linux release.

If you’re interested, pop along to this address at Microsoft, fill out a registration form to pick up your license key and sit back as you wait for a 3GB ISO to download, at which stage you’ll be wanting a DVD burner, or something useful like Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools to mount the ISO as a virtual CD drive.

Comments

5 responses to “A Weekend For Operating Systems”

  1. Marc Avatar
    Marc

    I haven’t looked at Vista yet and I don’t know if I will, but I really liked the Ubuntu Dapper release that I’m running on my home desktop.

  2. Ken McGuire Avatar
    Ken McGuire

    Good stuff. Any issues for you hardware-wise with Ubuntu? Not that I would be expecting any….

  3. Paul Browne Avatar
    Paul Browne

    Ken,

    You considered using something like VMware (now free!) to run Ubantu , Vista and XP side by side rather than dual or triple boot?

    Paul

  4. Ken McGuire Avatar
    Ken McGuire

    VMWare? There’s one I’m unaware of though if its going free I’ll certainly look into it. I just happen to have a another HD on order to arrive midweek. You used VMware yourself Paul?

  5. Paul Browne Avatar
    Paul Browne

    I swear by VMWare – I’ve been using it in various forms for the last 4 years. Basically it allows you to run a virtual PC within your PC, and allows you to both network and copy and paste between the two. Microsoft have just come out with a similar product (which is why you now get the free version).

    The advantages of VMWare over dual booting are:
    – you have both OS running side by side
    – you can ‘save’ the Virtual machine (VM) and restore it later
    – you can send the VM to your friends
    – you can have multiple configurations of the VM and swap them in and out as required (I use it for testing Enterprise Java Applications

    A lot of sites are now making pre-packaged VM’s ready for download (no install, just load the VM.

    Of course , it tends to put a heavy enough load on the host PC , but not as heavy as you might think (the Guest OS tends to run pretty fast). My 3 year old Dell Laptop copes with it no problem (even if it runs a little on the hot side)

    I’m sure I’ll blog about it on Technology in Plain Englishat some stage!

    Paul

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