My office laptop has Windows XP installed and I need Windows for sake of Outlook and Communicator. So I started to look out for alternative for having Linux on my laptop. There were three options suggested by different people:
- Get Ubuntu installed and run Windows XP as a guest on VirtualBox.
Now my workplace's IT guys do not install Windows on a VM, so they asked me to create an image of the Windows installed on my laptop. I searched for software to accomplish this and tried a few in vain. I tried a software called WinDD to copy Windows image to my portable HDD and since I did not checked thoroughly where it was copying, I got my portable HDD corrupted. It caused me a lot of pain, my important docs and many pics just got shredded.
Well that was it. I dropped this option.
- Get the Ubuntu on a pen-drive(PD) and make your PD boot-able.
It had a problem that Ubuntu installation was not persistent. Many of my setting could not be saved. Though I got a way to create a persistent image, still it can't save a few things like system time. Verdict: Dropped
- Get the Ubuntu running as a guest on host Windows.
After installing the guest additions, I am very happy with the screen resolution. I got few glitches with network setting and shared folders help. I got over them and will post the details in the next post.
So I am a happy man now, seeing my Ubuntu running on XP. All happy and gay!
PS: I am a fan of VirtualBox and so far have not used any other VM software.
