I'd like to see dual-boot as an option [LWN.net]

I'd like to see dual-boot as an option

Posted May 2, 2007 2:31 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338)
In reply to: I'd like to see dual-boot as an option by dwheeler
Parent article: Dude, you're getting Ubuntu (Linux.com)

They could even ship with KVM (or whatever) preinstalled on the Linux side, so you can get to your weird windows apps with a click on the desktop, no need to leave Linux at all. (Obviously there are many variants on this general smooth transition idea, including stuff involving Wine, fancy rdesktop setups, user data that lives on a partition equally accessible from both Linux and Windows, whatever works.)

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I'd like to see dual-boot as an option

Posted May 2, 2007 3:27 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

That would only work for a short time, unfortunately.

You could do it with XP, but with Vista EULA agreements forbid using their software in a VM unless you purchase the business or ultimate edition.

So it may work out for professionals, but even for people who would be interested in this functionality they probably won't if they have to pay a 200-300 dollar premium for it.

It would take work for Dell to get Windows hosted in a VM in a slick enough package for OEM stuff. I don't know if it would be worth the extra support costs and such for Dell to do that.

Beleive you-me Microsoft saw this angle coming and took steps to prevent it from working well.

I'd like to see dual-boot as an option

Posted May 2, 2007 17:14 UTC (Wed) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link]

Arguably, if you're in the process of transitioning to Linux, you probably aren't worried about Vista-only functionality, just in getting your old legacy apps working until a replacement is available.

I'd like to see dual-boot as an option

Posted May 3, 2007 2:05 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

>You could do it with XP, but with Vista EULA agreements forbid using their software in a VM unless you purchase the business or ultimate edition.

...Well, I guess no-one has ever accused MS of not being clever. Is this a technical or merely legal requirement? (I.e., can an operating system running inside a hardware-virtualized environment tell that it is running inside such an environment?)

If it's a legal requirement, it's only binding (assuming EULAs are binding at all) on the end-user. So there's nothing stopping we, who are not parties to that contract, providing nice packages that install kvm (or whatever), auto-detect other installed operating systems, and insert menu items in appropriate places. (Obviously people who actually click on these menu items would be violating their contract, but that's their own decision.)

Discussion question: Will Canonical's entering a contractual agreement with Dell end up forcing Canonical not to provide such packages? I can easily imagine that kind of user-friendly VM support becoming a feature of default distro installs, and the press release says that Dell will be installing pure default Ubuntu...