Running vista on Ubuntu?

Question

i am looking at putting Ubuntu on a laptop. I heard i could run a program so that i could run vista while being on ubuntu? or will i have to have two operating systems on one hard drive? im just wanting to get into ubuntu, looking for some pointers. thanks!

Answer 1

You can install Ubuntu 8.04.1 using Wubi installer. You keep Windows as it is, Wubi http://wubi-installer.org/ only adds an extra option to boot into Ubuntu. Wubi does not require you to modify the partitions of your PC, or to use a different bootloader, and does not install special drivers.

Wubi keeps most of the files in one folder, and if you do not like it, you can simply uninstall it as any other application.

LUg.

Answer 2

you can burn Ubuntu to a CD and run it from that CD inside windows

Answer 3

Okay, you probably heard about something called a VM. It emulates an entire PC inside of a window, letting you run something like XP or QNX in a Linux session. It's slower and not ideal for gaming, but a great thing for running the occasional Wine-protesting app or for testing software you're developing for Windows. Doing this will require you install a fresh copy of Windows for the VM, and probably won't work so great with Vista.

The other option is just dual booting. You install Ubuntu on another partition, and pick between the OSes at boot. A majority of Linux users probably do this, though they tend to move on to Linux full time at some point once they've given up those last few things.

If you just need to run some Windows software, try Wine. Its a reverse engineering of most of the Windows API calls, letting people run everything from Office to the latest games in Linux without even owning a Windows license. Its still not perfect even after fifteen years of work, but what it runs is pretty amazing and enough for the occasional game and many proprietary business apps. Wine will come with ubuntu, just an apt-get away :D