Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together [LWN.net]

Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Posted May 26, 2004 20:58 UTC (Wed) by sveinrn (guest, #2827)
In reply to: Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together by JoeBuck
Parent article: Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

I agree with the part about the "paper bage release" (wasn't it "brown paper bag"?). I recomended my brother to try Mandrake, but it messed up his partition table causing him to loose his collection of digital pictures. Of course he could have saved his files by doing the right things, but I wasn't there to help...

So I will never again recomend anyone to try Mandrake and my brother will probably never try Linux again. And if FC2 has the same bug, I will also stop recomending RedHat products, at least until this one is fixed. Maybe it is time to go back to my old favorite, SuSE, or are they affected too?

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1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 22:25 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

But almost no one installs Windows. They get it pre-installed when they buy their computer. And almost everyone who does install it doesn't install it after installing Linux. On the other hand, large numbers of people install Linux after Windows using a dual-boot setup. The consequence is that far more people are affected by this problem.

Look, the Fedora folks need to fix this bug. It should be treated as a show stopper.

1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 23:02 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

Lots of people install Windows.... like after it screws up and needs to be
reinstalled... or after a virus or worm, etc. The need to reinstall isn't
as bad with W2K and XP.

Again, I installed on about a dozen systems before I ran into this the
first time. It certainly doesn't happen every time... or at least that
hasn't been my experience. Perhaps it is because I've installed mostly on
pre-partitioned systems that previously ran Linux... but I'm not sure.

As reported over and over, it isn't unique to Fedora Core 2 and it is
really an issue with the kernel. I'm sure the kernel developers
(including several employees at Red Hat) are working on it.

The vast majority of people installing FC2 have downloaded it... and it
isn't their first Linux. Once it starts coming out in books and more
beginners start locking themselves out of Windows, it might be a bigger
issue.

1 Strike and you're out?

Posted May 26, 2004 23:35 UTC (Wed) by kena (guest, #2735) [Link]

Most home users don't "install" Windows. Most home users can't "install" it -- they can only re-image their system with the manufacturer's included image CD's. Which, sadly, will gladly step on not just the MBR and partition table, but everything else on the primary physical disk. Go buh-bye. Needless to say, MS doesn't care a great deal about the possibility that -other- operating systems might co-exist. Of course, the fact that that wipes Windows data as well shows how little they truly do care...

$.02

1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 22:55 UTC (Wed) by hchristeller (guest, #4246) [Link]

Windows may nuke the boot loader, but it doesn't overwrite the partition table without permission. Reinstalling GRUB or LILO is pretty easy, and well documented.

Figuring out why the partition table changed when installing FC2 to existing partitions was neither easy nor well documented. At least it's documented now.

In my case, Windows wasn't an issue. I wanted to install FC2 on a spare partition to evaluate it before upgrading my current Linux partitions. The FC2 installer complained about the partition table it found. I'd backed up the system, so I created new partitions with FC2. After restoring, my previous Linux complained about the FC2 partition table. I've been burned by partition table issues before, so I don't like to see warning messages.

Now maybe I have enough information to have a partition table that both old and new Linux distributions are happy with. Is that asking too much?