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Running Vista? It seems you shouldn’t be. The windows 7 beta seems to be beating out Vista in all performance tests. Windows 7 also uses far less memory and performance is much better. For those of you who hate Vista, maybe you should give Windows 7 beta a try.

However, it has been reported that Windows 7 looks and feels strikingly like Mac OSX. Very similar to Vista, but not completely. Still, if you’re running Vista right now, you may want to give Windows 7 a go, because I’m sure you’re annoyed with it’s performance and memory usage. If not, well you should be

For me, I’m still sticking with XP and Ubuntu primarily, but I may give Windows 7 a go at some point in the near future. If I do, expect a full write up on my experience. I absolutely hated windows Vista, I thought it was a piece of garbage that should have never been released. I actually may feel exactly the same way about Windows 7 because I’m more of a minimalist when it comes to GUI garbage.

I had Compiz running on Ubuntu and it gave me a bunch of problems and performance errors. Eventually I asked myself is this worth it? I came to the conclusion it wasn’t, and turned it off. If I could turn Windows 7 into XP with the default theme and windows 98 look I would be happy, because to be honest the only thing I like  about Vista/7 is the fact it has DX10.

Why do these companies keep focusing on GUI so much. I could care less about GUI I care more about functionality. Does it run better than XP, is it more secure, reliable? The answer to those questions for Vista is no. Trojans for XP still worked on Vista? Are you kidding me? I’m going to guess the same is true for Windows 7. No real improvements, just looks pretty and is less of a resource pig.

Maybe more people will switch this time around. I might, who knows. Maybe I’ll wait until all new games no longer work on Windows XP Again, those of you running Vista, it might be a good idea to check out Windows 7 if you want to free up some resources.

I know there are a lot of posts on this out there on the internet, but I thought I’d add my 2¢ on the subject. Generally speaking, Linux has a steep learning curve if you’re coming from Windows. The easiest distro of Linux to start with would have to be Ubuntu. A lot of things have a graphical user interface (GUI) with that particular distribution, and it will make the transition easier. You’ll still have to do a number of things on the command prompt, however. In all actuality the command prompt is much easier than the GUI when you get used to it. Instead of clicking clicking clicking and trying to find the right options, you can just type them in. Sometimes you are sitting around going from the command prompt to the GUI which is silly. Just try and use things in the command prompt, it’s better overall.

Heading over to Windows territory, this puppy is completely driven by GUI. There’s absolutely no need to use a command prompt, and the DOS command prompt is almost useless because you can’t really do much with it. Sure, a few things here and there, but I do not think it is nearly as powerful as Bash. This is actually a drawback to me. I’d prefer to have something like Bash in windows. It would make the incessant clicking go away.

Basically, what you can do in Windows you can do in Linux. There are tons of open source applications for it. Unlike Windows, where they want you to pay for every little thing. The only real drawback for Linux is it does not having gaming functionality. I would use Linux 24/7 if I could game on it. For some reason Microsoft doesn’t want to port DirectX over to Linux, and game developers rarely support Linux.

Installing a program on Ubuntu/Debian is as easy as typing “apt-get install *program*” and that’s about it. Sometimes you’ll have to go into the /etc/ directory and configure a .conf file. You might have to compile some programs. So what? What’s the big deal. Getting a general desktop up and running is as easy as installing the Linux disc. They all usually come with most applications you would generally use, it’s not “bare-bone” like Windows. So if you use generally applications you might not even have to install programs.

With Windows, you just click the installation .exe and you’re off to GUI heaven.

If you’re wondering about security, Linux is 100X more secure than Windows. It does depend on your distribution, but most are highly secure. This has been proven over and over. Almost everything targets Windows, there are some Linux virii/trojans, but it’s much less likely you’re going to get infected with things if you’re running Linux.

So, it’s your decision. If you want to learn, Linux is a very powerful operating system with a huge community behind it. Windows is run by Microsoft. If you want something that is very easy, go with windows. If you want something that you can tweak and manipulate almost every little thing, you want general programs, security, and fairly easy to use, go with Linux.

I myself use both Windows and Linux, and I know many others do as well. So if you can’t make up your mind, go dual boot. There are many things on Linux you just can’t do with Windows.

I have Windows XP installed on my D: drive and Windows Vista installed on my C: drive. I’ve edited the cfg files and moved some boot files for XP over to the C: drive, so I could choose between XP and Vista at start. My problem was, I wanted LINUX as well. Apparently I’m behind the times with Linux, because Ubuntu has something called Wubi which was PERFECT for my situation. All I had to do was install Wubi. That’s it, no complex partitioning, no messing with boot loaders, nothing. Easy. I still use the Vista bootloader to either boot XP, Vista, or Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is installed on my C: drive with Vista. It does not interrupt the NTFS file system. No partitions, oh how they have caused me problems in the past. What’s more, you can just uninstall Wubi like it’s a windows program. SO EASY. I can’t believe how EASY it was. I never had anything so EASY to work with when I was first doing my dual boot configurations. I just can’t beleive how far things have progressed behind my back

So, if you want a completely AUTOMATED dual boot configuration with Linux, Wubi is MOST DEFINITELY your choice. I only wish Slackware had an option like this. Sorry for my over emphasis of how EASY it was, but I’m just dumbstruck at how EASY it was.

Next stop, quad boot. I don’t think this will be as easy

General things needed for multiple OSes

Setting up a multiple OS platform for is pretty straightforward. I recommend you buy another hard drive, because in my experience partitions are nothing but trouble. If you want to go with partitions, then just use tools to do so, there are many of them out there I used to use Partition Magic, but you can easily do this from the DOS prompt as well.

Linux

Linux is a highly useful operating system, with many programming tools pre-installed, and it’s really not that hard to get used to. (for me)

I’ve tried many different distributions of Linux, including SuSe, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Slackware Linux. Slackware Linux is my favorite Linux distribution. Why? It’s stable, it gets the job done. I don’t need all the fancy tools they include in Ubuntu. Often I will also install Dropline Gnome onto Slackware, and choose whether I want to run KDE or Gnome. Slackware Linux also offers a few other GUI setups that are less resource hungry, if your PC isn’t up to date, Linux and slackware is the best bet for you.

Linux generally requires an Ext3 file system, but there are others that it uses as well, so in partition magic select that when you go to make the partition, if you’re doing it that way, if you’ve purchased an entirely new hard drive, then continue on.

Now, you’ve successfully partitioned your hard drive or bought a new one. What’s next? Well, just download the distribution you want, burn onto a CD and look into your motherboard for directions on booting from the CD drive.  Insert the disc during start up, and wallah start installing Linux.

You might need to format your hard drive to Ext3, or if you made a partition, it should already be formatted. Just install everything, it will also most likely install grub or lilo, (I’ve used both) install that to your boot sector on your main drive. You should be about done now, the PC will restart, and you will be prompted to select Windows or Linux. Depending on your distribution, it may require some setup to get into the gui. Slackware linux generally requires a bit of command line work before you can access the GUI, so you’ll have to read a bit. (here) That guide helped me when I first took on the challenge of installing slackware, interestingly enough, slackware was the first distribution of Linux I ever installed.

Hackintosh

Hackintosh is another story alltogether, the same applies for setting up partitions or a new hard drive however. You may have to try multiple discs of hackintosh before the automated installer works for your system. You also have to check to see if your computer components are compatible with Hackintosh. To do this, I advise you read over a few things at insanelymac. There’s also a “legality” issue with running hackintosh, so I’m not promoting it or anything I may or may not have installed hackintosh, I can’t remember

You’re going to have to create a “blank” partition, where it has not been formatted. This is because Partition Magic does not format to the Mac OSX file system, and neither does any other utility. This is done through the installation. Also, if you’ve purchased a different hard drive, then just leave it unformatted. Hackintosh is quite touchy with hardware compatibility, because it’s expecting your computer to be a mac, and macs basically just have USB ports. You’ll have to look for modification scripts on insanelymac, or if they don’t exist, then your hardware wont work and don’t continue. Many people purchase certain components on purpose to make it 100% hackintosh compatible, because their system will be MUCH cheaper than a Mac, but a lot of manual work is required. I’ve never been 100% hackintosh compatible myself.

Anyway, once the installation is done, then you might have to go into the bios and select the drive that hackintosh was installed on to be booted first. There are some utilities that can be modified to make dual booting with hackintosh work without doing it this way, but it is somewhat difficult.

Windows

Multi-booting with different versions of windows is a real pain. I currently have Vista and XP installed on separate hard drives, and have not had any issues, but it’s a real pain to setup. Each windows version will vary, Vista is very difficult to get working with dual-boot configurations. It requires some editing of the boot.ini file. Also, some of the boot files from windows XP have to be transferred to the Vista hard drive. This is because it is booting Vista first, and using the Vista bootloader. From there you select either XP or Vista. I can try to help you if you really want this kind of setup, but I’m not going to delve into it here, unless I get a request then I will edit this with the needed info. (Maybe I’m being lazy not wanting to look things up.. What you see here all came from my head )

There are some tools out there that can help you out with multiple Windows versions, I believe that every version except Vista works similar to Linux, but you have to edit the boot.ini file, or install one of the many OS selector applications out there.

Thanks, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you need help, I’m here, just go post in the forums

A goal of mine someday is to go Quad Boot. I love to mess around with different operating systems and have a choice when I boot up This is a general overview, to get you started on the road to multiple OSes, if I get a good response on this article I might make a more complete tutorial.

Small update: It seems Ubuntu has made it so you no longer have to partition your hard drive in order to install it. It will run with windows, apparently. I’m going to test this out soon.