Virtual thoughts
Over the past few months I have tinkered with Ubuntu using a swag of different environments ranging from full installations, dual boot and virtual machines. I notice some blog posts by users that have struck some grief when they have attempted a dual boot Windows - Ubuntu setup. Although they often have a good technical background it seems that they still strike the odd problem with the grub, NT boot loader, drivers etc.
If anybody is interested in exploring or tinkering with a Linux installation on a laptop or work computer, I would highly recommend that they start with a virtual machine installation with software such as VMWare.
With VMWare, tapping Ctrl-Alt-Enter on my laptop keyboard switches to a full screen mode, tapping Ctrl-Alt switches between the two operating systems on the fly. Even just plugging in a plain old USB key allows files to be swaped between the two operating systems. A virtual computer HDD file can be copied to another computer, launched from an external USB HDD or recovered from a previous state with a snapshot restore.
Playing about with an operating system this way is a great way to learn without the fear of messing up an existing computer system. Running an operating system this way has also helped me to better appreciate the power of virtual computing.
If anybody is interested in exploring or tinkering with a Linux installation on a laptop or work computer, I would highly recommend that they start with a virtual machine installation with software such as VMWare.
With VMWare, tapping Ctrl-Alt-Enter on my laptop keyboard switches to a full screen mode, tapping Ctrl-Alt switches between the two operating systems on the fly. Even just plugging in a plain old USB key allows files to be swaped between the two operating systems. A virtual computer HDD file can be copied to another computer, launched from an external USB HDD or recovered from a previous state with a snapshot restore.
Playing about with an operating system this way is a great way to learn without the fear of messing up an existing computer system. Running an operating system this way has also helped me to better appreciate the power of virtual computing.