MS Tells How to Delete Linux, Install NT or Win2K

Ion Berkley writes "Should we feel flattered or threatened that Microsoft now provides on-line instructions on how to delete Linux from your hard drive and replace it with 2000/NT? The only thing that suprises me about this is that they don't try to sell you a Microsoft tool to use in place of fdisk."

Comments

Wonderful!

[Foogle]

Thank goodness. Now everyone who's gotten a PC with Linux preinstalled with actually have a choice in the matter.

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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

A sad necessity for many people

[Duxup]

I did technical supervision for a number of techs for a large computer company for some years. You'd be surprised how the numbers of customers calling in for help removing Linux (if they even could pronounce it correctly *tear*) skyrocketed over the last year. Most clients hear the benefits of Linux but find themselves terribly ill prepared to work in such an OS.

I think it's a bit of a long jump to assume that a single M$ support doc reinforces Linux's competitive value against M$ products, and is somehow an attack on Linux. We also had to develop a support doc for our (less capable) techs to help the increasing # of customers who wanted to go back to Windows. Our more experienced techs assisted clients in dual booting so they could experiment in Linux, but keep the computer productive until they had things going in Linux.

I think it does provide a good sign that Linux indeed is getting allot of good attention from people who are willing to move to a new OS, but find current distributions too difficult to begin with. Perhaps if newer distributions were easier to use, customers would be more willing to stay. Many of them want to learn how to use Linux, but do not have the resources (or time) necessary to switch without a massive amount of bother.

In the meantime, the calls keep coming.

And, like most MicroFUD, its inaccurate.

[StenD]

Let the fun begin!

The partition types used by the Linux and Windows operating systems are incompatible.

A curious definition of "incompatible". Last I checked, my notebook had Linux and Windows partitions coexisting quite nicely, and Linux could access them all. Is it _our_ fault that _Microsoft's_ product is deficient in this area?

The Linux operating system is generally installed on partition type 83 (Linux native) or 82 (Linux swap).

Hey, how many people have installed Linux on the swap partition?

The Linux boot manager (LILO) can be configured to start from: ... The root folder (superblock) of the Linux partition.

I think the lilo README says it far better:

The LILO boot sector is designed to be usable as a partition boot sector.
(I.e. there is room for the partition table.) Therefore, the LILO boot
sector can be stored at the following locations:

- boot sector of a Linux floppy disk. (/dev/fd0, ...)
- MBR of the first hard disk. (/dev/hda, /dev/sda, ...)
- boot sector of a primary Linux file system partition on the first hard
disk. (/dev/hda1, ...)
- partition boot sector of an extended partition on the first hard disk.
(/dev/hda1, ...)*

"Superblock" in Linux terminology means that the Linux partition should be the active partition.

Well, since every (formatted) ext2 partition has a super block, that would be a bit difficult, wouldn't it?

Remove native, swap, and boot partitions used by Linux:

Hey, you told us about the native and swap partition types, but what is this "boot partition" type?

Insert either a bootable floppy disk or a bootable CD-ROM for the Linux operating system on your computer, and then press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart your computer.

Good...

Remove LILO. To remove the LILO, type fdisk /mbr at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

Well, no. Since you booted from a Linux disk, assuming that you did that from the shell, you'd get:

# fdisk /mbr

Unable to open /mbr

Also, Linux recognizes more than forty different partition types,

Closer to eighty, but I guess when comparing it to Windows, which is brain damaged and only recognizes things like

FAT 12 (Type 01)

FAT 16 > 32 M Primary (Type 06)

FAT 16 Extended (Type 05)

FAT 32 w/o LBA Primary (Type 0b)

FAT 32 w/LBA Primary (Type 0c)

FAT 16 w/LBA (Type 0e)

FAT 16 w/LBA Extended (Type 0f)

I guess they didn't want to make Windows look too bad in comparison (although they forgot to mention the NTFS partition types which Linux knows about). Well, I guess that I'll just tell them that their "information" didn't answer my question. ;)

Ah, for the days of Yggdrasil...

[torpor]

My first Linux distribution CD, in 1994 (ish) was from a company called Yggdrasil. It shipped on a single CD and a boot floppy - just pop the floppy in your PC (booting from CD wasn't even thought of in PC-land back then), stick the CD in your drive, and wait a few minutes - you instantly had a fulling working Linux machine running so you could evaluate it before you installed anything on your disk. That was actually an *awesome* way of showing Linux off to my fellow co-workers - it didn't destroy anything, yet it showed you what you got... and if you wanted, you could move over to your hard disk and thus have a writable filesystem to work on. But it seems that those days are over - I wonder if they'll ever come back? It'd be awesome, given the speed and power (and RAM capabilities - maybe we'd get a small ramdisk for /home or something) of todays PC's, to have a demo CD that booted Linux in read only mode (except for the ramdisk, maybe), didn't change anything, and gave you a glimpse of the OS without any liability whatsoever... If RedHat/Mandrake/SUSE/Debian/etc. could pull this off, demo's of Linux' capabilities would be so much slicker... Anyone know of any distro's that can do that today, like the good old days of Yggdrasil?

RedHat Manual Tells How to Delete Windows! Oh my!!

[Wonko42]

C'mon guys. This is such stupid immature behavior. Roblimo, that's the most immature article I've ever seen you post. My respect for you just dropped a little bit.

Guys, take a look at the Red Hat installation manual. I have in my hand a copy of the manual that came with 5.2, but it's basically the same as the 6.0 manual. The Red Hat manual describes, in detail, how to remove Windows from your hard drive. Big freaking deal. Red Hat tells you how to remove Windows, Microsoft tells you how to remove Linux. Do you expect Microsoft to help you install Linux? Or Red Hat to help you install Windows?

Grow up, folks.

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spinning the "upgrade" meme

[xeno]

It's not so much what the document says about how to remove Linux, it's what the doc says about MS's collective thoughts about Linux. Clearly it shows that MS considers Linux something that needs to be embraced (publicly acknowledged), extended (portrayed as something you migrate *from*), and extinguished (fdisk'ed). How do they go about this? They talk about "upgrading" in a targeted yet nonchalant way so as to ingrain a concept in a consumer's mind.

MS would like consumers to think that because Windows 2000 has a release date in 1Q2000, one would "upgrade" to it from, say, Suse 6.3 released in 4Q1999. However, the reality is that "upgrading" is a subjective concept. It implies that one is moving to or augmenting a system, resulting in greater value. To my mind, one would "upgrade" from W2K to any kernel 2.2 release. I'm sure that MS apologists would see things differently. The important thing for MS is to squelch this idea and redefine the debate, presenting (a) the notion of "upgrading to W2K" as an objective decision, and (b) drowning out all the other voices to make it seem as if the common wisdom relating to that decision is a nod to W2K.

Just as AMD and Intel are involved in a race for MHz when the consumer should be interested in actual performance (like attempting to judge the speed potential of a car by only looking at the tachometer), Microsoft attempts to refocus consumers' collective attention away from what's more well-developed or robust, to what's the latest version number, what's the most with-it name, or what's newest and modern.

There's a lot of Microsoft precedent for this:

• Version inflation, to make it seem as if the development work and stability present in a product is comparable to the competition. Witness Microsoft products such as MS Exchange 4.0, which was really a 1.0 release, MS Word 2000 (v9) which is really version 6, Schedule+ version 7.0 which was really release 3, etc etc)
• Association of a product release with a date, such as the OS and Office apps, to make it seem as if there were value in running a application with the current year in the name. One of the admitted original goals was to prepare the consumer for yearly software licensing -- an idea which MS quickly withdrew, at least publicly.
• Most importantly: The public positioning of the latest product as THE thing to which one upgrades. It's a mindshare thing. For example, when MS released NT 3.1 it supported HPFS, which is/was generally acknowledged to be technically superior to NTFS. However, HPFS was associated with OS/2, and was thus "old" technology. Clients were strongly encouraged to use the lesser NTFS technology, then (with 3.51) refused support if they used HPFS, and then (with 4.0) forced to abandon the superior file system technology entirely. To my mind, NT was used to kill a technically and architecturally superior Warp 4 simply by marketing that portrayed the latter as old and tired. (Not to make any apologies for IBM, which couldn't market a firehose to a common consumer in a burning building...)

W2K will be marketed as the latest thing, the most "2000" thing, and the best thing -- despite the fact that the first two are valueless, and the last is something that is only determined by the consumer. Personally, I will "upgrade" my NT4/RH52 system at work to W2K (because it will make life easier in a Win-centric office), and then will "upgrade" my new home system that will inevitably come bundled with W2K to the latest RH or SuSE distro (because I don't like sloppy code or bad licenses in my home; it's a poor example for the kids).

J