Dual Boot T61p or go *nix only (xp in a vm)?

Dual boot my desktop at home and usually run Ubuntu 90% of the time. Only mess with XP to sync my Zune, although now I have an iphone so XP is a necessity (bleh).

Just picked up a T61p from the Lenovo Outlet. Don't have any XP discs with me so a little concerned about that...also just read that the XP serial on my laptop may not be 'real'.

Anyway, have been planning on running Ubuntu/*nix on this lappy from the get go, but since it was the Outlet it came with XP. The question is, am I going to miss out on the Lenovo 'features' and software (i.e. hard drive protection) if I go Linux only and just run XP in a VM? I guess I still have to figure out whether running XP in a VM will still let me sync my iphone...worst case I'll use my wife's laptop.

I'd love to go Ubuntu only, as I'm going to try to do development on here and don't really need anything else in XP. Should I go *nix only? Or just dual boot in case something bad happens. Hate the thought of a wasted 20 or 30GB on XP though.

 

I don't think you'll miss out on much of your Thinkpad's features under linux. Lenovo and IBM are very strong supporters of linux. You might have to do some moderately involved tweaking to enable active hard drive protection, though I can't really say for sure as I've never owned a Thinkpad.

You might want to look at this article. There are many awesome things you can do with the built-in Thinkpad accelerometer than simply protect your data.

In any case, linux on a Thinkpad is a sure win.

 

I agree with archer. But it also depends if you play games. If you do, VMs don't have 3d acceleration, so you can't play very recent games. If not, then XP in a VM is perfect for your needs.

 

I usually install a game...then never play it. So I can probably skip that.

OK, if I go the VM route...(this is probably worthy of some research and a seperate thread), can I just use an XP disc I create from my i386 partition? Or do I need to track down an XP image?
I was thinking of using VirtualBox or Xen. I think I need to do some research...

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

There are guides online on how to make an XP disc from your C:\Windows. the two most popular VMs are VMware and Virtualbox

 

I say you install both and dual boot for now. Your own usage of what you need your machine for will tell you whether you need XP on the laptop or not. If eventually you feel that XP is not necessary, then when you do an upgrade of Ubuntu, wipe the space used by XP and use it for Ubuntu.

You will lose the nice Thinkvantage software in Linux, but Linux does have a couple of equivalents(not sure how mature they are or how well they work). For example they have something called HDAPS that does something similar to Active Protection and they have Thinkfinger that does something similar to the Thinkvantage fingerprint software.

Try it this way first, then you will know....

 

FYI, I'm running Kubuntu 64 on a T61. It works quite well, especially with XP in a VirtualBox VM. The main issue is that VirtualBox doesn't support rdesktop with it's open source version, and it doesn't support full USB connectivity as far as I know. As in, the transparent connectivity you'd need to connect to your Zune.

If it's just for music, would it matter if you didn't have video syncing capabilities? Because Amarok is a great media management application

EDIT: Never mind. You can't actually transfer files to the Zune with Amarok. Get a non-Microsoft media player

 

Fire snake speaks wisely! ^^^

 

That's kind of what I was originally thinking, leaving 20GB or so for an XP partition, dual booting Ubuntu/*nix and still playing with the VMs. Just figured if I could get the VMs to work why use the dual boot...

It's probably worth it to create a 'clean' version of XP based off of my build now, just in case, and go ahead and install that, then come back over with *nix.

I'll let ya know what I decide and how it goes. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

All the best for your installations!

 

go get 'em!

 

So...

iTunes within a VMWare Workstation XP guest OS (trial mode) seems to recognize my iphone. Didn't actually try to sync it as I originally sync'd it with my dual boot XP partition.

But that's pretty good news! If I don't want to game might be able to zap XP permanently...

 

Why can't you do it the other way, i.e. Windows host and a Linux guest? Virtualbox even has support for seamless desktop for Linux guests on Windows.

 

I wanted to go linux only, but I'm taking Design Graphics this sem, and need Pro/E Wildfire. So I had to install a 30Gb XP partition. It guess it's good to have it there just in case you want to play games or do some Windows only stuff.

 

B/c Windows sucks.

I use *nix at work and want to do development at home in a similar environment. Since I only use Windows for syncing my Zune/iPhone at home, would rather not have to dual boot and just run everything in Linux.
I could probably do the same thing with *nix VMs in Windows, but I prefer linux as the native OS - it's fun to play with Compiz Fusion!

 

Well, this is the linux section.