It is 2 in the morning on Saturday. I just got my laptop set up the way I want it (hopefully I can also say, that it was not just a whim, but I really need it that way). I am so excited that I want to spill my joy and share a bit about my experience.
The Sony laptop I bought came with the Windows 7 pre-installed. The moment I opened my new computer I loved that OS: clean, fast, intuitive, with a bunch of built-in features that previously were available only as additional applications. But I knew that I wanted and would eventually need more.
At my work I have a few people who have been instrumental in introducing me to the exciting world of Open Source. For most of us, Microsoft users, the very idea of Open Source software idea is alien. We have become so dependent on Microsoft, and MS related applications that we have been missing on a whole new and different world which is out there for exploring and taking. Microsoft has been very successful in scaring us of from other Operating Systems, namely Linux in a variety of its flavors.
So when I got my computer I wanted to set it up differently from original configuration: I wanted to have at least a dual-boot machine with Windows and Ubuntu Linux installed. In addition I have become very dependent on my XP, so I thought that I was not quite ready to quit it cold-turkey. Therefore my original idea was to have a triple-boot machine: Windows 7, Ubuntu, and XP- just in case.
I have my work laptop set up with dual-boot: Windows XP and Ubuntu. In that case there are particular applications that I use at work which have been originally created for Linux only. I set that laptop that way myself with some marginal help from my collegues, so I was rather confident this time that I can tackle on this task and accomplish it quickly and easily.
I was wrong. I learned more about MBR and bootloaders than I could ever care. I found out that there are different dependencies, and dramatically different proceedures and outcomes depending on in what order you install the given operating systems.
For a short while, with a lot of help with setup from my collegue, I had a reasonably well-working triple-bootable machine. But then I went on tweaking some finer points of boot process and the whole thing just fell apart. Every next step in a futile attempt to fix it and bring back to fully operational state was just making it worse, to the point when I did not have access to any of my operating systems. This whole ordeal with intermssions was going for over a week. And really I don’t have all this time to waste on setting up the computer, because I bought and need my computer as a tool for work in my MBA classes, and not to have it as a thing to itself.
Eventually I had to make an executive decision and severe my ties with XP (isn’t this what Microsoft wanted us to do in the first place anyways?). The final stage of this laptop setup (cleaning the mess of previous installations, repartitioning of the HD, reloading of the OS’s) took me two days. It was pretty straight forward process, though time-consuming. I set up a dual-boot machine with Windows 7 and Ubuntu. My setup of the hard drive space is as follows:
- Windows 7 – 75 Gb
- Ubuntu 9.10 – 15 Gb
- Storage partition for keeping all my documents in one place accessible from both OS’s – 200 Gb
Now I still have to re-install some educational software in Windows, but this is not going to be a problem from this point. So now that I am done with configuring my laptop, I will be able to work without distraction on the homework for my MBA classes, and to post in this blog on my business school experince more regularly.
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