SXPS 16 and WinXP/Ubuntu

For curiosity I just want to know, If we have dual boot install of WinXP SP and Ubuntu after complete removal of WinVista, does the machine found all drivers and the machine runs smoothly ?

 

Are you crazy ? Windows XP is lame sh*t (Vista is much better)

> Install Win7 > searches drivers on net
> Create new partition for Ubuntu and you are good to go

 

Vista is teh lamest f°ck ever. Get XP!!

 

That is not what he wants to know.
His question is: Is XP & Ubuntu possible with all needed drivers?

As far as I know not: if I'm not mistaken, the Dell Quickset is not available for XP so not all laptop-buttons work. Otherwise I would prefer XP also.

 

All the touch buttons are working OK on mine with XP, with the exception of the DVD eject button. That's not a problem of course since you can just select eject on the drive in explorer. The LCD/external keys on the keyboard don't work, but that's not a problem for me. Brightness up/down work OK.
I must admit to being surprised that the volume and fwd/stop etc all worked OK since there seem suggestions that you needed to add some extra drivers/apps for this, which I haven't done. Since AHCI is of no real benefit on a laptop, I swapped back to IDE mode in the BIOS before installing my XP using the 'repair my installation' method and an image from my Inspiron 6000.
XP is of course better than Vista which is why 90% of corporates haven't made the move...
Win7 is another matter, although I still haven't been able to register for the upgrade.

Edit: Just tried my 'Ubuntu on a stick'. Not an exhaustive test, but it boots, the keyboard and screen work and so does Firefox.

 

I tries to put Ubunt on my computer thinking it would be nice because of the fast loading times, I also wnted to see if I could get airsnort to work. I was wrong, it only loaded about 5 seconds faster than vista (my loading time for vista to the logon screen is about 40 seconds). When I got into the operating system it was laggy and everything didn't look as clean. To add on to that I didn't fancy hunting down all the drivers.

Then I decided I didn't want it anymore but realised that there was no uninstall manager. I had to scour the internet to find a way to get rid of it as simply deleting the ubuntu partition would make the grub loader freak out and spazz on me. Turns out you have to use the vista instalation DVD to put the MBR back to the default so it wouldn't load grub on startup. Then, thinking I wouldn't be able to see the partition in vista, I put the ubunutu instalation disk back in and tried to use the partition manager on that to get rid of the partition, all it did was to try and boot me bck into ubuntu. I tried that a few times and finally gave up. Then I decided that seeing if I could see it through vista was worth a try, I could see it and I deleted it right away and resized my windows partition back to the good ol' 450gb it used to be.

To sum things up, vista has driver support, ubuntu doesn't. Vista looks better, ubuntu doesn't. Vista seems to run better, ubuntu doesn't. Vista boot almost as quickly, the difference is small. Ubuntu is a pain in the to get rid of if you decide you don't want it anymore. Only install ubuntu if you really think you want it, I must have wasted a good six hours over it, first I had to do complicated defrags to shift the small amount if data that was on the wrong side of my partition to the good side which took a good hour or so. Then I had to actually install the damn thing which took the best part of an hour. Then I played around with it for a little while and spent the next few hours trying to get rid of it. My conclusion is that it was good half life time wasted. Screw ubuntu

 

Does Vista have an "uninstall manager"? Will Vista even let you install it alongside an existing non-MS OS?

 

It really isn't that hard. In Windows just run "fixmbr" (or use the recovery CD as you did) and then delete the partition using the partition editor in Vista/7 or run GParted in Ubuntu....

I disagree with reasons #2, #3, and potentially #4 (depends on your definition of small and the hardware being used).

Just because you don't know how to get rid of it doesn't mean it is a pain to get rid of. It's easier to get rid of than Windows for the most part.

+1

I would think so on Windows XP but wouldn't expect rendering much 3D content due to the presence of an ATI GPU.

http://www.linlap.com/wiki/dell+studio+xps+16

Overall the consensus is the machine will run at least decently and at least a few were able to utilize their GPU for 3D content.

EDIT: Two more people, regarding Ubuntu on the SXPS 16, indicating everything went well.

http://www.ubuntuhcl.org/browse/product?id=6714