Dual boot made easy - Puppy installers

[greenknight]

You can now use an EXE installer to install Puppy Linux in a Windows PC.

Just download the EXE of the Puppy version you want and click on it; the installer will add (1) Linux to your Windows boot dialogue and (2) Grub menu for choosing how to use Puppy Linux. Also, two directories will be added to your hard drive: a "boot" directory containing the boot scripts, plus a "puppy" folder containing the Puppy Linux files.

Dual booting was never this simple! More details and links to mirrors at http://puppylinuxnew...nux-in-windows/

[Eldmannen]

Also possible with Ubuntu using the Wubi installer.

http://www.wubi-installer.org/

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wubi

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide

[greenknight]

I had the impression Wubi was a little more complicated. Really nothing to it, though, is there? Except for needing to create a username and password, it's just as simple.

I also heard that Ubuntu installed with Wubi suffered a substantial performance penalty, though that may have been overstated. Puppy runs completely in RAM, so there should be no performance loss. I'd give Puppy the edge in in simple to use, anyway.

Personally, I think I'll stick to the live CD (or DVD), which is will boot when Windows won't. Gives you a backup when Windows breaks. By installing under Windows you lose that.

[Tarun]

Who wants to use Ubuntu anymore though? They put ads in Ubuntu and when you search for things in Ubuntu you also search Amazon at the same time.

[Eldmannen]

I had the impression Wubi was a little more complicated. Really nothing to it, though, is there? Except for needing to create a username and password, it's just as simple.

I also heard that Ubuntu installed with Wubi suffered a substantial performance penalty, though that may have been overstated. Puppy runs completely in RAM, so there should be no performance loss. I'd give Puppy the edge in in simple to use, anyway.

Personally, I think I'll stick to the live CD (or DVD), which is will boot when Windows won't. Gives you a backup when Windows breaks. By installing under Windows you lose that.

Yeah, Wubi is that simple.

Wubi works by loop-mounting a disk image on the NTFS partition. The disk I/O performance may decrease.

I use a real install of Ubuntu on a ext4 partition on a solid-state disk with the NOOP I/O scheduler. It is blazing fast!

Who wants to use Ubuntu anymore though? They put ads in Ubuntu and when you search for things in Ubuntu you also search Amazon at the same time.

Yeah, that really sucks!

The Amazon integration can be disabled by uninstalling the 'unity-lens-shopping' package.

$ sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

I never liked Unity though (the default desktop shell on Ubuntu). I use gnome-session-fallback (which uses gnome-panel) so it is essentially like the older Ubuntu before they developed Unity.

[greenknight]

Mint also has something similar, they call it Mint4Win. Not surprising, since Mint is based on Ubuntu. Many like it better than Ubuntu, due to the Ubuntu suckage described above. I think I'd be more inclined to install Mint myself, for that matter.

[James_A]

Who wants to use Ubuntu anymore though? They put ads in Ubuntu and when you search for things in Ubuntu you also search Amazon at the same time.

When did that first come in? It seems you just can't trust anybody anymore, when Ubuntu moves from being free software to ad-supported software.

.

[Tarun]

It's coming in the 12.10 (Yy-Mm) release of Ubuntu.

[greenknight]

Mark Shuttleworth explains the rationale in this blog post:http://www.markshutt...m/archives/1182

I read that Canonical will get a small cut if you buy anything from Amazon you find this way, but he doesn't mention that.

[James_A]

Thanks to you both for bringing me up to speed. The situation, already reported in the UK as raising "A storm of protest", was probably not helped by Mark Shuttleworth's comment about "Erm, we have root".

Anyway, to bring this back on-topic, why Puppy Linux specifically? Apart from the ultra-simple install what else do you like about it to choose it over other flavours?

.

[greenknight]

I wanted an OS on a live CD I could use when Windows broke, and for secure online banking. I was on dial-up at the time, and Puppy claimed to support most dial-up modems, including soft modems - the only Linux distro I found that did. Since this would save me having to spend $20.00 for Linuxant drivers or buy a Linux-compatible modem, I was quick to give it a try. I found that it not only worked, but the connection was extremely easy to set up, with a wizard to walk you through the whole process.

In fact, I found that nearly everything was easy to do in Puppy - and it's fast! The entire OS loads into RAM, so everything responds instantly. I fell in love with it right away. It can make even old hardware run with blazing speed, and it's the most user-friendly OS I've ever used (and that includes Windows).

Naturally, the need to keep it small imposes some limitations - but what most people use a computer for, it will do easily and quickly. Anyone who thinks Linux is hard to learn should give it a try, it will change their mind.