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?"

Comments

Will it fly?

[erroneus]

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.

Re:Will it fly?

[Yvanhoe]

It will fly, but you have to leave the laptop out of the bag for security check. Have a nice flight sir...

Re:Will it fly?

[morgan_greywolf]

I agree. And you can even suspend/hibernate/resume and both OSes will retain their state. This is what I did for my wife's laptop. She occasionally needs Windows for a few things (like loading/converting other people's Microsoft Publisher or Visio files), and it works great. Just make sure you buy lots of RAM.

Re:Will it fly?

[morgan_greywolf]

That'll change. 64-bit OSes are now mainstream -- and even VMs are becoming mainstream -- so it's only a matter of time before chipset and mobo manufacturers push the limits of more and more of their consumer-grade commodity stuff beyond the previous '4GB barrier'.

Re:Will it fly?

[kimvette]

Hmm, a Linux laptop would also fly if it were in Ballmer's presence and he ran out of chairs. . .

Re:Will it fly?

[causality]

Yes, Linux supports NTFS. You've referenced the right module NTFS-3G. Ubuntu has had this module included by default since version 7.10: gutsy gibbon. Prior to that, it had to be manually installed.

I run a windows XP / Ubuntu 7.10 dual boot setup at home & the NTFS support is great. Ubuntu can read and write to both windows & linux partitions flawlessly. All of your windows files are accessible in the linux mode. I think that there is a slight performance hit (10% or so) for using linux rather than windows to write to the ntfs partition.

The sole downside to that arrangement is that it does not provide any facility for fsck-type maintainance of the NTFS filesystem. The NTFS-3G userspace driver unfortunately does not come bundled with anything of the sort and I've had difficulty trying to find a standalone fsck.ntfs type of program. You can find good programs to read, write, and resize an NTFS filesystem but no Open Source software seems able to repair one. I'd love to find out I'm wrong about this. A friend of mine used a setup like this and eventually experienced a small amount of data loss after unexpected shutdowns (power failures) that were not immediately repaired like Windows would have done on bootup.

If anyone does know a reliable way to repair NTFS filesystems under Linux without actually running Windows, please let me know. Otherwise I'd recommend staying away from NTFS filesystems if at all possible or considering an alternative like FAT32 (as terrible as that may be). If you don't mind Windows having read-only access to your data, you may want to try the EXT2/3 driver for Windows as an alternative.

Re:I could see this making sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they innevitably complete botch their windows partition: I could imagine some people trying linux.

Dupe?

[Bearhouse]

It's not dual-booting really, you either run Linux on an ARM, or Windows on a Core2.

Link at end to the original EE article, rather than gushy blog.

Did we not cover this earlier this week?

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3TF41VYEZTQY0QSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=213402554&printable=true&printable=true

Re:I could see this making sense

[erroneus]

Wooo! Now That is a perspective that had not entered my mind! Suddenly Windows becomes "broken-slow" mode and Linux becomes "Reliable Backup" mode.

A Linux "spare tire" might well be a good way to prove its reliability to the average user/consumer.

Bad for Linux

[Jahf]

The author seems to think that exposure to Linux here might convince people to leave Windows. I strongly disagree.

I used to be in technical marketing for a desktop Linux distro. People listen to the marketing message especially when it is negative. What does that mean? Well lets look at the implied marketing message that is given by this system:

"Linux is good enough for your quick tasks like firing off an email but you need Windows to do your heavy hitting."

ANY corporate non-techie is going to see that if they have to boot Windows to get their big tasks done they obviously don't want Linux on their main system.

Now let us think about the actual environment you get with each:

Linux - Arm processor ... limited applications. The non-techie won't know that they've been artificially limited by the laptop manufacturer. They're just going to know that "Linux is slow" and "I can't download new apps in Linux".

Windows - Intel processor ... full applications and no limit on downloading new software.

Seriously ... things like this are the WORST thing possible for getting the idea of Linux as a desktop replacement out to the mass market. They not only have to fight the current battles regarding custom apps not being written for them but they add artificial misperceptions about the limitations of Linux.

Sometimes no exposure -is- better than bad exposure. If you look only at the bullet points it is cool that a laptop is shipping Linux. 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.

Easily enhanced

[johnw]

Surely the obvious thing to do with this is to scrub Windows and install Linux on the other processor too. Then you can have low-power instant-on Linux for long battery life and quick tasks, then a fairly transparent transition to high power Linux when you want to do something requiring more grunt. It would be interesting to see whether you can have both running at the same time and communicating with each other.

Problem with "Dual-Hibernate"

[yet-another-lobbyist]

I once thought this "Dual-Hibernate" (suspend-to-disk) was a great idea. However, I ran into real trouble as soon as I wanted to exchange data between the two partitions. Trying to mount an NTFS partition in Linux that was left hibernated by Windows can create a real mess. More generally, think of file systems in which you do not really have control at what time the data is actually physically written onto the disk. Having all the data on a third partition that is unmounted before hibernating in either of the two OSs could work, though.

I have no idea how a "Dual-Suspend" would work if you mean "suspend-to-RAM"! How can you even start the other OS while one is in suspend? How do you tell each OS to only use a part of the memory?