Enough is enough

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

I've become so disenchanted with windows as an OS that I've decided to switch to Linux on a full time basis and run windows off of a VM when I need to. I have 2 questions which I hope you guys have answers for. 1. Anyone know of a way I can make an image out of my whole harddisk? I can copy that to any of several external storage disks and use it from there. Or that's the plan anyway. 2. What's the best, least likely to crash VM on Linux to run Windows as a guest OS?

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Sig history "dad" Ishmail-Samuel Mustafa "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance" Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I now think of you as Mr. T! - Trollslayer

Garth J Lancaster

hmmm 1) our guys can import Norton Ghost images into VMWare ESX and it seems to be successful - even of NT machines - there are other imaging tools around, eg 'Acronis TrueImage' (I think thats what it is, not sure if VMWare can import that if its important to you) 2) XP Pro, Server 2003 R2 seem to be quite common choices at our shop - but we also have some legacy NT VMs's to preserve some older software 'g'

Russell Jones

I use virtualbox from sun on my linux installs. Best thing i like about it is its seamless integration mode; this gives me a linux desktop with the gnome taskbar across the top of the screen and an xp task bar along the bottom. The apps run side by side on the desktop with the window decoration being provided by the OS that they belong to. I guess you should be able to take an image of your harddisk but you'd need to do all the things you normally have to do if swapping to a new MoBo/processor i would think. Maybe best asking on the appropriate forum for the visualisation package you decide to use. Which distro are you planning on moving to? Russ

NormDroid

And from your bio "I'm a Senior .NET Solutions Engineer..." does that mean the end of development for Windows ;P?

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Garth J Lancaster

Ive seen a colleague (who no longers works for us) use Sun's Virtualbox under Ubuntu, with a virtual XP machine for printing 'through', since his printer wasnt Ubuntu/Linux/postscript compatible - very cool :cool: 'g'

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

Not at all, its just that Windows sucks really badly. Also, I'm trying to expand my horizons because this summer I'm moving back home to Canada where *nix is certainly more in demand than here in Jordan

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Sig history "dad" Ishmail-Samuel Mustafa "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance" Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I now think of you as Mr. T! - Trollslayer

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

I currently use VirtualBox (I wrote VB first but then again I don't want any affiliation with VB, .NET or otherwise) to run Linux VMs but for some reason, it does nothing like a sheep that while chewing suddenly stares into the distance. Its also a serious memory hole. Most likely either Fedora, OpenSuse or PcLinuxOs. I'm entertaining the thought of buying VMware, I'm just not sure if they have a linux version.

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Sig history "dad" Ishmail-Samuel Mustafa "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance" Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I now think of you as Mr. T! - Trollslayer

Russell Jones

I've had no memory hole issues running VirtualBox on Linux but i guess YMMV. As a long time KDE user I have to admit that i've been using gnome rather more recently as KDE 4.1 isn't quite ready IMO. I don't know if suse ships with KDE 3.5.x or 4.1 but 4.2 should be out later this month i guess so maybe it's worth waiting till then if you want to use a KDE based distro. I used to use Fedora until a few years ago and i've always found the community to be a pretty good bunch. Russ

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

Ah! Faithful Ghost, possibly the one and only good thing that came out of Norton but not enough to balm the traumatic wounds caused by their anti-everythingbutthevirus. XP Pro Server on a linux? Linux will be the host system for any VM that I will be using and windows will be the guest.

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Sig history "dad" Ishmail-Samuel Mustafa "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance" Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I now think of you as Mr. T! - Trollslayer

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

It doesn't matter much so long as I can install Eclipse and GEdit. I'm a bit more used to KDE though. I also like FreeBSD but its a pain installing it.

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Sig history "dad" Ishmail-Samuel Mustafa "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance" Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I now think of you as Mr. T! - Trollslayer

Russell Jones

Out of interest, which version of KDE have you been using? I played with KDE4 for about a year up to october this year and it came a long way in that time but just didn't seem complete to me. Stability was fine, it looked lovely but somehow integration between different tools and lack of functionality in some of the tools that were present put me off in the end. I'll be going back to try 4.2 when it comes out later this month and see if anything has changed. Russ

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

I'm not sure if its 4.0 or 4.1. I can find out when I get back to my computer at home.

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Sig history "dad" Ishmail-Samuel Mustafa "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance" Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I now think of you as Mr. T! - Trollslayer

Russell Jones

4.x rather then. I suspect that i need to try it again but in a KDE specific distro. I may be getting a second hand pc in the very near future so maybe i'll stick suse on that and see how it goes. It does seem that other people are having much better experiences than i had with using it in kubuntu. Russell

El Corazon

VMware has a utility to copy an entire windows system. I have a virtual image of my last PC. But for the most part I prefer new installs and VirtualBox since 2.0x they have improved a lot. However, I run both on windows with windows and linux as guests. My advice: Windows or Linux get used to problems. Technology is advancing and we're finding the crunch of technology....

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David Crow

I personally have never had any issues with any of Peter Norton's tools. Did you ever use any of his DOS-based tools? Those were cool (at the time).

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Lost User

Be warned - I tried that with Ubuntu which is about the best distro. DO NOT RUN ANY UPDATES!

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Russell Jones

ah the delightful updated kernel problem. I tend to avoid kernel updates unless i desperately need something in them. It's always possible to boot into the old kernel version instead of the new one if it does go wrong!

Jim Crafton

None. Good luck. Although VMWare might be better, at least if you want to have the ability to take advantage of your video hardware.

While I share your pain, linux is *not* going to solve this. Unless you're talking about usage patterns that favor a command line experience, GUI's under linux are largely a nightmare hash. Oh, they look pretty enough at first glance, but they quickly expose all sorts of issues. If you're doing development on linux then prepare to be miserable. If you're wanting to use it for entertainment purposes, i.e. watching videos, listening to music, prepare to be greatly annoyed at having to deal with random sound loss, tracking down various common, useful, codecs that the freetards don't see fit to include by default, etc. Printing? Have fun. If you're just wanting to email and browse the web, you may be OK, but I still wouldn't really reccomend it. If you're genuinely curious about other operating systems and how they work, then by all means go for it, but if you're seeking a no-hassle tool, don't get your hopes up.

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Miszou

Well, that's the end of that little foray into Linux I guess. Once he settles on a particular distro, a dozen neckbeards will pop out of the woodwork and confuse him with fancy talk of 'other' distros that are still Linux but somehow magically better. Then the infinite loop of installing and reinstalling distros will begin. His ISP will cut him off for excessive bandwidth use and accuse him of being a pirate as he downloads each new distro via BitTorrent. At some point in the cycle, he'll realize that Linux is fun and all, but he's better off with an operating system that allows him to actually get work done, instead of tinkering with it all the time. With a bit of luck, this point will be right around the time Windows 7 appears and it will solve all of the problems he had.

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Russell Jones

Was just asking! I'm interested in changing distros at the moment and was wondering which way he was heading. One great thing about linux is that it keeps your home drive on a separate partition if you've got it set up that way. During the install I tell a new version where my home drive is and on first start up most of my app settings, browser favourites etc are still present. I take your point though it can become a little bit of an obsession but the thing needs less tinkering than windows it's just somehow really tempting to tinker with it anyway. Russ