Dual boot, and I don't mean work shoes.

Hi all, you know that responding to my geeky posts will only encourage me, right? Anyway, I will be sure that we post plenty of baby news for the ladies when we have baby news. Currently there is not much to report. Wifey went to the doc again and they changed her due date by a few days and that's about it.

You may have noticed that I refer to everyone by nicknames. Please don't be offended if you find what you suspect is a reference to yourself with a funny nickname. Everybody gets one. Now that I've gotten the disclaimer out of the way...

We had lots of company this weekend! On Friday night the Basin Babe called and asked if she could come hang out for the night. An hour later we were feasting on pizza and swapping tales. She left Saturday morning to meet a friend and then we had two friends from a harvest crew come to stay for Sat and Sun.

Now, if you think that RAM refers to a hydraulic device or if CPU sounds like part of a hospital, you will probably be thoroughly bored by what follows. Stop here. However, if you happen to know what 11111010111 in binary translates to in base 10, you will probably read the bit below with a sort of geeky glee.

The Mission
Sparky, one of the harvest crew, called a few weeks ago asking about installing Linux on his laptop. I was rather surprised because Linux on a desktop is a step into the abyss of computer geekery. Linux on a laptop is an even more perilous venture. To make it more interesting, Sparky wanted to maintain his Windows install just in case he needed it. So, my mission was to repartition (resize) the Windows drive to make room for a Linux install without destroying Window's "functionality" (I use that term loosly).

Linux Explained
What is Linux? I'm glad you asked. Linux is, for practical purposes, completely FREE (legally too) operating system (OS from here on out). It is a path to freedom from the clutches of Microsoft and the rest of Mr B. Gate's evil empire. It is open source, meaning the programming code is available to the masses, and is the product of thousands of folks, more intelligent than I. The name comes from one of its founders: Linus Torvald, who combined his first name with UNIX, a very similar OS architecture. It was originally designed for web servers so it is very stable, almost immune to viruses and is an extremely powerful OS. Linux comes in different "distributions" or distros. These are specific builds, or versions, of Linux that are optimized to do different tasks. For instance, some distributions are designed for school systems, government offices and some for web servers. Each distribution comes with software (again, FREE) that is handy for whatever task it's designed for. Linux is used in many poorer countries and is used everywhere for web servers. Traditionally it has not been very user friendly (many commands are executed from a terminal, like DOS) and in the past was not easily compatible with many types of hardware. Modern Linux has literally thousands of free applications, programs and games that can do almost any task you can imagine. It can run on almost any chunk of silicon that resembles a computer. Oh, and Linux' mascot, that cute little penguin named "Tux" you may have seen around (like at the top of this post), is far cooler than the lame Apple or Windows logo.

Linux Distributions
Now that you know everything about Linux I can tell you that I chose to use the Ubuntu linux distro. Ubuntu is an African word that translates roughly as "I am what I am because of who others are." It was designed to be the most user-friendly version of Linux since the dawn of man. It was also designed to be an OS solution for poverty-stricken schools and governments. It comes with virtually all the tools that the average computer user should need, including the open office suite which includes tools that are very similar to Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint. I believe that Ubuntu is not only a noble cause, it's a highly functional and golden piece of work. Other famous distros are Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo and there are many others.

Click here for more about the Ubuntu Linux Distribution

OS on the fly
The coolest thing about Ubuntu is the Live CD. You pop the CD in and restart your computer. It boots into a fully functional install of Linux FROM THE CD. Nothing is installed on your hard drive permanently. You can install from the Live CD whenever you want, or you can just see what Linux is all about. Though it doesn't install anything on your drive, it does have the ability to manipulate your hard drive. Herein lies the answer to my partition dilemma.

Partilicious
Time for step one of the process...repartitioning. I had a spare laptop hard drive with windows already installed. I put it in my lappy and tested a force-repartition of Windows. I'm not even going to explain what that means because if you care you probably already know. Point is, it worked and so I did it to Sparky's lappy too.

Does my drive look FAT in this enclosure?
So now I had the Windows install limited to half the hard drive and the other half unallocated space, Ubuntu's new home. Here's the kicker: Sparky needed to be able to fetch his Windows files for use in Linux (yes, Linux programs can read almost all types of files from windows). He could use a flash drive to save data from Windows and then pull it back off of Linux but that solution just didn't satisfy my inner geek. The problem is: For all practical purposes Windows can't read EXT3, the Linux format type. And Linux can't read NTFS, the Windows format type. But both Windows and Linux can read FAT32. Yay! So, I partitioned a 2GB drive as FAT32 so that he could save files from Windows or Linux to a hard drive that the other OS could read.

Mission Accomplished
Long story, slightly less long: I was able to repartition windows on the fly, install Linux, create a swap drive where he could move files back and forth, initiate a dual boot system so he can select which OS he wants to work on when he boots up, import his bookmarks, email, documents and address books into Linux and leave him with a ultra-powerful laptop that can do darn near anything.

The Summary
To illustrate what Sparky's request meant to me I will use an analogy: Imagine that you are a gourmet chef. Every day, the requests you get are for ramen noodles. Week in and week out you make ramen. Then, one day someone comes along and asks you to make a ceaser-salad, tomato-basil gnocchi, a toasted baguette and a complimentary wine. Finally, someone who speaks your language and can challenge you to create something great.

Refreshed, I now resign myself to another six months of spyware cleaning requests.

Final Disclaimer
Don't think that you are just going to install Linux and love it. If it were that easy, Bill Gates would not be a household name. If you do want to try Linux I recommend installing it on a totally separate drive or spare computer (you don't have one?). Never try to install Linux first and then Windows for a dual boot system. Never try to install both on the same partition. And, contrary to this post, I recommend NOT resizing your Windows partition if you like your data. Always save your game before trying the Linux quest in geekland.