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Dell Selling Dual-Boot Laptops
rsmiller510 writes "The EE Times reports this week that Dell has released a hybrid laptop running both Linux and Windows clearly aimed at business travelers. Linux for quick tasks and Windows for more intensive ones, but will such a machine really fly in the business world?"
NO!
Rebooting is a chore. Once people start up, they don't want to shut down to start up another application. It's not what they are used to. On the other hand, if this were done as a VM where the Linux machine were to boot and they installed Windows XP in a VirtualBox or some other VM, then that might be acceptable. Then they would have their safer, virus-free environment for email and web browsing and then a VM to host the applications they need to run. This stuff works really well.
Once they innevitably complete botch their windows partition: I could imagine some people trying linux.
it won't work. People will boot to the 1st OS (as they don't want to select one and they will get annoyed if the 1st OS in the boot menu is not windows because they won't be able to leave the computer unattended to boot.
Sadly it's human nature to be lazy. The computer would need to select the correct OS by reading the user's thoughts before it would be viable.
>>>Linux for quick tasks and Windows for more intensive ones
This implies that Linux can't do intensive work, as if it's not a real OS. That's not true, is it? Besides the real benefit of abandoning Windows is you can lower your retail price by ~$100, since Linux is free. With this dual boot configuration there's no price savings.
Well whatever. Bottom line is: If I could buy a Windows Vista machine with a Linux at no additional charge, then sure I'd go for it. I enjoy free extras.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You can run your installed windows partition under a VM and avoid having to reboot at all.
And if you can keep your bosses from ever reading the parts about using Linux in a limited way (and NEVER let them touch one of these) then it would be good. But you can't. And you can't control the perception that Linux is limited once they start using it in a stunted environment like this.
No doubt--it seems to me that most people rarely forget a bad experience with new things. Let them see Linux for their first time on this wacky machine, and they'll be telling their friends for the next 5 years that they "tried Linux and Windows on the same machine and Linux was slow as hell."
I suppose there's some awesome technical issue beyond my comprehension that would explain why I can't just run either OS on either processor. If anybody knows what it is, I'd love to hear about it.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
I'm a non-corporate techie and I don't have Linux on my main system. Once I decided that I had to have Windows directly on the metal at any time, I had to jettison Linux. Why? Because pretty much anything I can do in Linux, I can do in Windows, and this way I don't have to multi-boot. Sure, Linux does many things BETTER than Windows, and if I need to attack a device with dd or something, I'm not running dd.exe. I'm plugging into one of my Linux systems. But for day to day use Windows will do everything, and if I need a bash shell or something there's cygwin. (I haven't figured out powershell yet and I hope never to have to.)
The simple fact is that multi-booting is annoying. Windows has a hard time reading Linux filesystems and Linux has a slow time reading NTFS, so you end up with files that you can't conveniently access from one OS or the other (or both) and having to bounce back and forth to move files around, et cetera. Every so often you add or remove some big waste of disk space and then you have to repartition and the most entertaining Linux filesystems can't necessarily be moved around conveniently, so you have to shuttle Linux off to another disk, repartition and resize Windows, then bring it back.
With all that said, a quick-booting mini-Linux distribution that booted into XBMC and with a couple of programs under the programs launch menu (like firefox, skype, etc) could be a great additional feature for a laptop, especially if it loaded from flash. Granted, I can do this myself by leaving something in my SD slot, but then I can't view photos from my camera in XBMC with autorun on insert. It could be a strong selling point on consumer-grade laptops which are marketed as a media player (glossy screen at. al.) I could also see a teensy linux web-only boot on a netbook that has windows installed - sometimes you just want to browse the damned web. And again, probably it should also have a SIP client and Skype.
You should be able to accomplish this in a pretty small footprint, tucked off in a corner of a flash drive. It could be a standard feature on 12GB and 16GB models which would never even notice the lack, and an optional install for others.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've only been using Linux exclusively for 9 years, or so. I am really glad someone finally pointed out that I can't actually get any work done in it and that in order to do any work I need Windows.
Now, who is going to break this to the fortune 500 companies, governments, schools and thousands of other organizations using Linux and FOSS?
Or it may further solidify Linux's reputation as a throw away environment that you do not use to get "real work" done.
I've been using the same Windows VM in VMware at work for 2 years now and it has survived two Ubuntu upgrades just fine (7.04 -> 7.10 -> 8.04). I even have it on both my laptop and desktop since the files are easily copied and transferred to other systems. Basically you should only have to set it up once and then you're done, never to need to reinstall windows ever again assuming you don't lose the image to hard drive failure.
I'd usually applaud any OEM's decision to sell their kit with Linux installed, but I'm seriously questioning whether this particular implementation style is going to help Linux or not.
Why?
PHB's, that's why. Already articles like the one linked to are setting-up Linux as a "light duty OS" by saying things like:
The Linux OS provides a quick boot for checking email and other "light" computing duties while the Windows side allows "heavier duty" computing like running Microsoft Office applications.
Taken out of context that's a complete load of crap, but it's something Microsoft must be just loving to see.
You and I would understand that, in this case, it's because Linux is installed and running on an ARM-based subsystem with less memory and less bandwidth to play with, but PHB's will get this light-duty reference stuck in their heads. And this will be reinforced when they try to do something "difficult" with it, and it happens slowly or not at all, and they'll come away thinking "Linux is crap" when they really should be thinking "Windows is crap, why does it need so many resources?"
Why should I care? Because it's the PHB's, unfortunately, that sign the cheques to get new hardware and if they get the wrong ideas about Linux then Microsoft with their Windows and other software will continue to dominate the market.
Why couldn't Dell just quick boot into Linux and then run Windows apps under Wine, or even VM the whole Windows installation? :(