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Sunday 13 September 2009, 4:11 PM
Grubbing XP Pro to 2nd Boot
I installed a replacement hard drive and started the task with DELL's XP Pro re-install disk. I have images of the system but they are loaded with a lot of stuff I didn't really need for future work. So I decided to re-install everything from scratch. The DELL disk was slip-streamed with SP2 and I have a network install for SP3. So maybe its not really totally from scratch, close enough.
This time I'm running a clock on the whole process. I won't fault Microsoft for the bad drive so the clock starts at 4:23AM after the drive is installed and the system has started booting from the CD.
I've partitioned the 200 GB drive I installed into 2 sections. The first partition is NTFS for Windows XP Pro at 90GB. The second will be for Ubuntu 9.04. At this point, the second section is just unpartitioned space. There is a second drive, 320GB in size, that is formatted in a single partition as NTFS. Both drives are Western Digitals. The final drive complement is a CDROM\DVD RW and a CDRW drive. The computer is a P4, 2.8GHZ with 1GB of DDR RAM, a DELL Dimension 2400. It has the stock Intel video 845 family chip turned on as primary video adapter and a Nvidia TNT2 Riva PCI pcb with 64 MB of RAM as the second video adapter. Drivers for all of this are from the DELL web site. The Nvidia drivers are in SP3.
Base XP Pro system install at SP2 level is done by 5:08AM.
In the end what's installed on the system is SP3 from the network install package already resident on the second hard drive and approximately 60 updates downloaded “live” from Windows Update. Not all of the ones offered, but most. Total size of the first of 3 Windows Updates runs was 149 MB, including IE8. There were updates that loaded specifically for IE but I have no clue what size the files were. I refuse to install MediaPlayer 11 or dotNet framework 1.1. MediaPlayer 11 gets dumped because of the DRM issues. As to dotNet 1.1, nobody should still be writing to that piece of drivel. Other ignored patches related mostly to security patches appropriate for NT domain membership or for multiple language options I'll never need.
I also installed Mozilla FireFox 3.5, OpenOffice 3.1, Google Chrome, InfraRecorder, mspgcc (a gcc toolset for the TI MSP430) and Adobe Reader 9.1. All of these were package installs from the same second drive. With the exception of mspgcc, these are what I consider essential function tools for a typical desktop.
I used the open source tools simply because the Ubuntu install will get the same applications installed to match the XP.
Clock stops at 6:30AM. Total install time for Windows XP Pro SP3+ selected applications is 2 hours and 7 minutes. Actually quite fast for Windows simply because I “cheated” and already had all of the packages downloaded minus the SP3 updates.
Clock started again at 7:15AM. Now Ubuntu 9.04 is getting the same installment routine into the open partition on the IDE primary master drive (sda). The base system has finished installing by 7:30AM. I go into System/Administration/Update Manager and start it to download all the updates released for Ubuntu 9.04. It downloads 145 MB of updates and starts installing them.
Clock stops at 7:55AM. Total time for install is 40 minutes. Google Chrome for Linux isn't out of early Beta although I really don't need it on Ubuntu. Infrarecorder isn't necessary on Ubuntu since Brasero installs as part of the base install. The base install also includes FireFox 3.x, an Adobe Reader substitute, and OpenOffice 3.0. I haven't looked yet but mspgcc might be available in Linux.
I did get one giggle out of all the keyboard banging and mouse clicking this morning. There was an option to import my User settings from the Windows XP Pro partition. Not ever having done that before I clicked it mostly to see what it would do. It grabbed my desktop picture from the XP Pro Settings & Documents folder for my XP admin account and dropped it on the Ubuntu desktop. Ba-da-bing.
So for the price of:
1 hour and 27 minutes more of my time installing Windows XP Pro versus Ubuntu;
20GB of hard drive space used by Windows XP Pro versus 8GB of hard drive space in Ubuntu;
no differences in functionality;
potentially becoming XP-ground-zero for every malware-writing jackass in the world;
I get the “equivalent” in Windows XP Pro?
No contest.
Ubuntu wins.
PreviousComments on this post
If you like Google Chrome, you could install the original Chromium for Linux (development version) on which Google Chrome for Linux will be based.
I have not been able to find it by Googling, but was able to install it via the Tweak Ubuntu programme obtained from http://ubuntu-tweak.com/
I presume that Chromium does not contain all the tracking elements of Google Chrome (for Windows) and functionally is similar and stable, except that Flash is not yet enabled. One slight irritation is that it always opens a warning page in addition to the selected site(s).
On Windows, I use SRWare Iron which is based on Google Chrome with the tracking elements stripped out.
My own experience of installing Windows XP and Ubuntu, updates and essential programmes is that the time differential is much greater than you have reported. I have also stayed up all night recovering after disasters.
Good stuff, excellent reading. I have the same general experience as Moley, the time differential is much more when I do it, but I suspect there are two reasons for that. First, you (XWJ) are much better at loading, updating and configuring XP than I am; second, Ubuntu 9.04 has a very large set of patches right now, and they take a particularly long time to install.
I haven't put any effort into Chrome, on Linux or Windows, but I suspect that I put approximately the same amount of time into loading Opera onto both.
jw
By the Way: I think I found some of those copyright or patent infringements by Linux that Microsoft has been claiming.
The desktop picture that is displayed was the Azul background picture, the one with the sailboat, the 3 palm trees on a sandy island and the perfectly beautiful tropic sky. I'm sure that Microsoft has claimed a patent on God's work since they think of themselves as at least demi-gods. (At the very least it could be a really good Photoshop job, and I'll bet they think they have claims against Adobe too.)
It could also be that they claim IP rights to the three palm trees, the sandy island and the boat. That would be 5 infringements right there.
In any case if you add up all the sample pictures included in all the versions of Windows based on NT ever released, I'll bet they come up to at least 145 pictures, each of them with a patent, a copyright or some other IP claim.
Yes was good read Xwindowsjunkie, I'm still looking into Ubuntu atm once I've read up on it a bit more I might try what you yourself have with it, got some old hardware laying about the place.
The only other thing I'll need is a usb kvm interface to allow me to share the keyboard mouse & monitors.
I cannot remember what the name of the software is but there is an application that allows you to push your mouse around from window to window along with your keyboard. Its not a virtual machine application.
One of the software programmers was/is using it. He has an Apple laptop running OSX while programming in Java using Eclipse on Cent-OS in a VM on the Apple. Windows XP Pro is running on another system without a monitor and he pans from desktop to desktop without changing monitors, keyboards or mouse. The "host" needs some horsepower but the other system(s) seem to be able to run more decently humble kit.
The easiest solution ignoring the KVM issue for a bit would be to use the Ubuntu install CD in Live mode. If you are interested in Ubuntu, if you have the Live ISO/install disk, you can run it on the older hardware as a Live install without committing anything to drive space. Just set your BIOS up to boot off the CDROM(or DVD) drive first before the hard drive. It takes a while to load up and start but I've run Ubuntu 9.04 on Pentium II systems running 500 MHz and with only 256 MB of RAM. Not the fastest desktop BUT faster than XP on the same system hardware! Even with the limited space, everything runs in the RAM of the system being "tested".
(BTW it can be downloaded and burned to a CD-R even on a Windows computer using Nero or practically any of the Windows burner programs! I know that the ISO has some interesting features like a file named "Autorun.inf" which is there to enable compatibility for people that want to try Ubuntu from WITHIN Windows! I've thought about trying that but it didn't seem worth the time with the Live CD option.)
If you just want to learn Ubuntu on your main machine, just run it in a VM or Virtual Machine. Sun has a Virtual Machine program called Virtual Box that has installable versions for practically ANY host OS out there. Its free and its excellent software.
I've tested Virtual Box with VMs for 10 or 12 different Linux distributions while running on a host system running Windows XP Pro, Windows 7 Beta, Visaster (shudder!), Ubuntu 9.04 and OpenSolaris 10. It has never failed to operate properly with any combination of operating systems. I prefer it over VMWare for Workstations because it seems to run better on slower and older hardware. Compared to VMWare, its slightly limited but for desktop usage its much more than adequate.
I've also installed Ubuntu 8.1 on an AMD Geode based system with 256 MB of RAM. The CPU is a low-powered (less than 5 watts) 600 MHz clock speed "All-in-one" embedded CPU/IO chip combo. That takes a little twiddling but its a nice tiny little system to stick in out of the way spots. I bring this option up because some of the older versions of Ubuntu might actually run better on smaller amounts of RAM or older CPU's. (Bloat is creeping in on Linux too!)
My house is a technology attic. I've managed to patch together 3 17" LCD panels from castoffs replacing big fat CRTs. I have PS2 and USB keyboards and trackballs to spare. All of my systems at home are recycled, refurbed or built from junk. So yes I appreciate the idea that a smaller carbon footprint is do-able without buying the latest green-whatever.
I still can't remember the name of that program!
you can find the links for the .deb packages for Ubuntu located at:
http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel
To enable flash plugin for chromium(not same as google chrome):
http://maketecheasier.com/enable-flash-support-in-google-chrome-in-ubuntu/2009/08/19
Hope this helps clear up any confusion on installation. Just remember that it is still in beta and could be unstable with Flash plugin enable.
Thanks, and just in time for the weekend! I guess I know now what I'm doing Saturday.
Thanks svinehunt. I have just enabled Flash in the Chromium Development Version (daily updates) using the instructions you have guided us to. Works fine, no problems although the command line is different in Chromium properties:-
chromium-browser --enable-plugins %U
I find the Chromium browser extremely nice to use, presumably it's without the Google snoop elements; and now that I have flash enabled will be able to use it for everything except my online banking and my GMX Webmail.
Cheers XWJ duly noting down info's,
the other system i have is a athlon 3200 with 1gb ram, geforce 68, on board realtech audio, think the only thing I'm missing is a case but thats not a biggy, I probably end trying the Sun VM box first Ubuntu but now that you've mentioned that should be able to try as many as me heart desires. :D
Cheers.
