some do not have such a bad experiance of
MS and duel booting is a fair choice.

My MS computers work just as well as my Linux ones do.

In all fairness i think most folk are only dual booting because
they've only been using linux for a couple of years and still have
hardware or one or two bits of software that is still windows.

I'm currently dual booting so that i can run a vehicle engine tuning
app and a mind mapping program i like. The scanner only takes windows
drivers and only gets used a little so isn't on my list of priorities
for replacing yet. I was using OSS on windows and so the majority of
my everyday needs were catered for the instant i swapped to linux.

Couple more years and like you i'll only be linux.

I used to dual boot but I've recently discovered how powerful virtualbox
(from the repositories) is. There were two reasons I thought I had to keep
Windows - MS Streets and Trips and a proprietory remote access database
programme used by my political party to keep track of all memberships. The
former uses a USB GPS sensor and the latter a VPN.
I installed virtualbox and Windows XP within Ubuntu and found much to my
surprise and delight that both worked perfectly! Most of the time they
aren't in use, but when I need them I don't lose the functionality and
stability of Ubuntu. It's just a keystroke away.
This has proven so stable and useful that I now have virtualbox on all 3 of
my Linux machines and use it to test out new distros daily, without
installing and potentially messing up the finely tuned Linux Operating
Systems I like to use daily. There is something very satisfying about having
many alternative O/S's available this way, running just as well as if they
were dual booted.

I also used Virtualbox and some distros that I could not run on my PC could
run in Virtualbox: Knoppix, Kanotix, ROSLIMS and PCLinuxOS. The window sizes of
Virtualbox were various for the various distros, too big for Slax, for example,
quite big for Knoppix and Damn Small Linux, rather small for Windows XP.
I also ran Windows 7 Black Edition in Virtualbox and tested it at various base
memories, I was amazed and surprised when I saw it working at 256 MB base memory
(slow but still functional). However, I can say Microsoft should re-edit and
sell Windows XP or something similar rather than sell Windows 7. I was
disillusioned by Windows 7.

Not so in my case. I teach computer use, build them and repair
them so I will always run both systems for trial runs alone.

Everyone should use what works best for them, not what someone else does.

That said, several years ago when I was just getting into Linux I purchased
several KingWin racks and trays,
kingwin.com/.../kf_21_ipf.asp
The original HD has Win2K only and is in one tray. Another tray has a HD with
only Ubuntu on it.
I don't have to go through the BIOS setup. the swapped HD works fine even though
it is from a different manufacture and a different size.
At first I used Win quite a bit. Ubuntu was mostly for playing with and
learning. Now days I very seldomly use Win but it is there just in case. When MS
quits supporting Win2K that will be the end of MS software for this boy.

But something should not be stopped to be used when the company that produced
it stopped supporting it. It is useless to throw away old things because the
company that produced them decided to do so regardless of people's needs.
It is the case with Windows 2000, MS-DOS, Windows XP, Visual Basic 6.0 (for
which there are still books sold and it is still used), Qbasic (which is still
used by some people, I myself used it ), Windows 98 (still used in some Internet
Cafes here as they do not want to buy any more software).
Sometimes it is useful to revive "dead" or unsupported software.

I agree, with one important caveat...
When no more security updates are being produced for that O/S one must be
extra cautious to avoid "suspicious" (= almost all) attachments and use
powerful anti-virus, anti-spamware etc. tools.

Well, you are right in the case of using Windows. I surfed a lot of suspicious
commercial sites, a lot of online games sites, downloaded all the attachments,
opened almost every spam message, installed a lot of software.
The result was that the antivirus ate up 3-4 viruses/week on a regular basis,
and for the first time my Windows XP installation got almost totally compromised
in 4 months. I will not say what happened later.
I would say Windows is OK for running Windows software and some DOS software
for which there is no equivalent or something similar in Linux and which do not
run in Wine and Linux is almost ideal for the Internet. "Don't worry, be happy
!". And it is cool !
I do not have what to use Windows for. I test some Windows variants in
Virtualbox, however. Virtualbox is OK. In the case of dual booting I would
advise the use of two hard disks and to disconnect the Linux hard disk (just
unplug the power cable from the Linux hard disk) in case of reinstalling
Windows. I had to do the same when installing Linux (Xubuntu alternate) on the
Jetflash.
Anyway, I aggree it is better to use virtualization instead of dual booting.
In Virtualbox one can have a lot of virtual machines. A long string of Linux
distros and Windows or Unix variants (this might be stupid). And one can run
some OSes in parallel if there is enough RAM and processing power. I ran either
two Windows variants in parallel or one Windows and 2-3 Linux distros and filmed
this. I also took some pics for demonstrative purposes.
I will install OpenSolaris today.

I am happy with three choices of platform and on Widows never ever get
the problems you appear to have with
attacks and spam, probably due to always using Pandasoftware

As you say Alex there are quite a few people who still use Win 98 out of
choice and why shouldn't they if it meets their needs and any other
older version of any platform.

Their are two many people around who poor scorn on other because they do
not upgrade, use the latest version or have-not gone totally Linux yet.

I have seen several posts about not liking "dual boot". I tried and I have to
say I did not like it either. I have since tried the VirtualBox and I love what
I have seen so far. Initially I installed VBX on a laptop running Vista as the
host OS. I installed ubuntu 8.10 as the guest OS. The experience was painless
and simple and the VBX is downloadable from http://www.virtualbox.org/.

What I like about it is you can have both (multiple) OS running at the same
time, you don't have to stop one and re-boot to get to the other one. They also
have a seamless mode where you can have multiple windows from both OS's open on
your desktop at the same time.I don't have many hours at the console yet but I
like what I have seen.


I have since reformatted my laptop to make the ubuntu 9.04 my host. I will
probably install VBX and then make Vista the guest.