Took The Plunge - Ubuntu Dual Boot

[Axe Man]

Since I use Linux at work decided it was time to play with it at home. I went the dual boot route with Ubuntu 9.10.

Target machine: Dell 2400, 2.8GHZ Pentium 4, 768 MB memory currently running XP3.

The install went very smoothly. The only hiccup was upon first boot of XP3 after install. Windows fussed and whined that the hard drive partition was changed and insisted it run CHKDSK first. Once it was satisfied that everything was OK it booted up without further issues.

Some benchmarks:

XP3 after clean reboot consumes approx 300 MB idle.
Ubuntu 9.10 after clean reboot consumes approx 154 MB idle.

XP3 Firefox 3.6 vs Linux Firefox 3.5: It's essentially a draw. Both boot up rapidly with perhaps a slight advantage to Linux.

While Ubuntu is definitely a "light" OS I really don't see a performance increase over XP3. Both are fast and responsive on this Dell despite it's age and limited memory. But I'm not into gaming nor other apps that require heavy duty processing power. Mostly just internet and spreadsheets. Going to keep playing with it and see what I can discover.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Axe Man
While Ubuntu is definitely a "light" OS I really don't see a performance increase over XP3. Both are fast and responsive on this Dell despite it's age and limited memory. But I'm not into gaming nor other apps that require heavy duty processing power. Mostly just internet and spreadsheets. Going to keep playing with it and see what I can discover.

I use it on my Pentium D (using 64-bit Ubuntu, of course). The 64-bit, which you would not be able to run, provides a significant performance boost.

For an application like yours (or where you're comparing a 64-bit to a 64-bit OS or 32 to 32), a lot of the advantage comes from not having a bunch of useless garbage running in the background. No anti-spyware, no anti-virus, no iTunes, and no Adobe Quickstart running in the background saves a lot of overhead.

Since it would appear that you have the experience and knowledge, you may want to try an older version of Ubuntu (i.e. 6.06 LTS, I believe the version is) as a third option, at least to try it out. I have a machine with the identical specifications to yours laying around, and I had the older version installed (since it was what was available at the time), and it was much quicker, using less resources. I had upgraded to a newer version, and was dissatisfied with the performance penalty, so reverted. The only trick may be finding the outdated version and entering the correct repository names.

 

[Nick R]

If it weren't such a pain in the rear end to install stuff in Ubuntu, then I might be more inclined to use it. I HATE using terminal, is it so hard to create a ".exe" style installer for it? IE double click to install? Noooo.

 

[eljefino]

Have you used the synaptic package manager? Shiznit.

 

[BobFout]

Originally Posted By: rudolphna
If it weren't such a pain in the rear end to install stuff in Ubuntu, then I might be more inclined to use it. I HATE using terminal, is it so hard to create a ".exe" style installer for it? IE double click to install? Noooo.


.deb files. Easier than a traditional windows installer actually.

Or the vast library of software from the Software Center.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: BobFout
Or the vast library of software from the Software Center.


Not to mention that Ubuntu lets you update everything at once, rather than update Windows, update Acrobat, update Firefox, update anti-virus....

Edit: As for the terminal, I've only had to install one package from source, ever, and I've been using Linux for years now.

 

[Axe Man]

Quote:
I use it on my Pentium D (using 64-bit Ubuntu, of course). The 64-bit, which you would not be able to run, provides a significant performance boost.


If I could convince my wife to hand over her Toshiba laptop running WIN7 x64 I might give it a try.

But I heard and read that WIN7 and dual boot do not play well together.

Quote:
For an application like yours (or where you're comparing a 64-bit to a 64-bit OS or 32 to 32), a lot of the advantage comes from not having a bunch of useless garbage running in the background. No anti-spyware, no anti-virus, no iTunes, and no Adobe Quickstart running in the background saves a lot of overhead.


My XP3 start up has exactly 7 required items running. No Itunes helper, Adode quickstart, and other assorted garbage consuming resources. Of course the biggest difference in resource requirements is the anti-virus. To keep that low I run MSE.

Quote:
Since it would appear that you have the experience and knowledge, you may want to try an older version of Ubuntu (i.e. 6.06 LTS, I believe the version is) as a third option, at least to try it out. I have a machine with the identical specifications to yours laying around, and I had the older version installed (since it was what was available at the time), and it was much quicker, using less resources. I had upgraded to a newer version, and was dissatisfied with the performance penalty, so reverted. The only trick may be finding the outdated version and entering the correct repository names.


Thanks for the tip. I'll keep an eye out for an older version.

 

[GrtArtiste]

If you have already installed 9.10 and it is running satisfactorily, I'm not sure I see any advantage in replacing it with an older LTS that is already past it's end-of-life date. Is it running to your satisfaction?

 

[Axe Man]

Originally Posted By: GrtArtiste
If you have already installed 9.10 and it is running satisfactorily, I'm not sure I see any advantage in replacing it with an older LTS that is already past it's end-of-life date. Is it running to your satisfaction?


Yes, very happy with it. I did forget to mention that it boots in 1/3 the time vs XP3.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Axe Man
If I could convince my wife to hand over her Toshiba laptop running WIN7 x64 I might give it a try.

But I heard and read that WIN7 and dual boot do not play well together.


Microsoft not playing well with others? Say it ain't so!


Originally Posted By: Axe Man
Thanks for the tip. I'll keep an eye out for an older version.

Just to clarify, in case I was ambiguous, I meant to add it as a third boot option (triple boot), rather than overwriting the current version you are running. It might be interesting just for comparison's sake. You can always have the newer version swallow the older version's partition down the road.

 

[JustinH]

Ubuntu is a great operating system for keeping old computers alive.

I haven't put it on my main machine, but I now have it installed on my fathers p4 machine, and my mothers celeron machine.

It runs fantastic in comparision to XP, and I have less calls to field about it.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

There's no problems dual booting Windows with Ubuntu, SuSE, etc.

The only issue with dual booting is SuSE pointed to the wrong partition on 11.0 so you had to edit a text file. Blechh.

Otherwise, dual boot is easy. The key though is to always have the Windows version you want installed first.

Vista & Win7 don't like their boot partition resized. Do read up on this one. XP doesn't care.

 

[Axe Man]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Vista & Win7 don't like their boot partition resized. Do read up on this one. XP doesn't care.


Yep, I read up on it. It is possible to dual boot Vista/WIN7 but I guess you have to real careful how the partitions are set up. The Ubuntu forums are littered with Vista/WIN7 dual boots that went horribly wrong. I almost didn't go for it until I read that XP was somewhat painless. It was other than the CHKDSK on first boot.

 

[GrtArtiste]

Originally Posted By: Axe Man
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Vista & Win7 don't like their boot partition resized. Do read up on this one. XP doesn't care.


Yep, I read up on it. It is possible to dual boot Vista/WIN7 but I guess you have to real careful how the partitions are set up. The Ubuntu forums are littered with Vista/WIN7 dual boots that went horribly wrong. I almost didn't go for it until I read that XP was somewhat painless. It was other than the CHKDSK on first boot.


I had no unusual problems when I installed 9.04 in a dual-boot on my Vista machine. I just used the Vista "shrink volume" tool to create the unallocated space for Ubuntu and then installed it. I've since updated to 9.10 and that was easy too. I still run XP SP3/8.04 on another machine and this is where I really notice a performance difference. In Ubuntu, it's ready to go immediately after the desktop appears. OTOH, in XP the machine is essentially unusuable for about 5 minutes as it continues to get itself organized.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: JustinH
Ubuntu is a great operating system for keeping old computers alive.


Oh yes. As an aside, as I mentioned in the thread, I have a system with the exact same specs as that of the OP. In addition to running Ubuntu 6.06, I also run FreeDOS on there. That lets me use an old version of WordPerfect and get some life out of an old Panasonic 24-pin printer.

DOS really flies on a machine like that. Unfortunately, the FreeDOS 32-bit project doesn't seem to be going places. Then again, how much more speed could I possibly need from DOS?

 

[Cutehumor]

I'm doing xp/linux mint 8 dual boot. light and day with boot up and shut down with linux mint. 5 seconds to shut down in linux mint. xp is bogged down with a ton of things running in the background.

 

[simple_gifts]

Originally Posted By: rudolphna
If it weren't such a pain in the rear end to install stuff in Ubuntu, then I might be more inclined to use it. I HATE using terminal, is it so hard to create a ".exe" style installer for it? IE double click to install? Noooo.


As mentioned synaptic already does this. Of course it also knows how to uninstall software, a feat no windows program I've ever seen knows how to do. Just look @ all the reg clean and uninstaller utilities people ask about.... Little code turds left all over the machine; what a model for stability.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

code turds.

 

[L_Sludger]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: BobFout
Or the vast library of software from the Software Center.


Not to mention that Ubuntu lets you update everything at once, rather than update Windows, update Acrobat, update Firefox, update anti-virus....

Edit: As for the terminal, I've only had to install one package from source, ever, and I've been using Linux for years now.
Ubuntu is a system that Enabran would have been proud of.

 

[GrtArtiste]

Originally Posted By: L_Sludger

Ubuntu is a system that Enabran would have been proud of.

Enabran Tain was a great character. Too bad they didn't make more use of him and the Obsidian Order.