Amazingly simple way to run a dual boot system, and how Vista screws it up

APC Magazine » How Vista screws dual-booting nirvana
[...] In my sanguine state, I didn’t even notice that I had just told Ubuntu to hibernate instead of shutdown. Generally, I tend to avoid hibernating my notebook. Over the years I’ve become accustomed to treating an OS like my office; the first thing you do when you open the door in the morning is open up some windows.

So I hopped on a train and headed back to my place, a.k.a. Casa del Penguins - more because of the absence of heating than the (admittedly above average) volume of Linux machines in attendance.

After a little dinner, and a vain attempt to warm myself under a pile of stuffed animals, I booted my notebook into Windows XP for a little bit of World of Warcraft.

All well and good, and entirely within the parameters of an ordinary evening. It wasn’t until I got to work the next day that I found something which made me squeal for joy: my Ubuntu session was still hibernated!

Yes folks, that long rambling anecdote was all leading up to this point - a good boot loader, in this case GRUB, allows users to do wonderful things.

Since finding this, I’ve checked it out and even Windows XP can be simultaneously hibernated with Ubuntu on my notebook, meaning that I can always have a session of each ready.

Sheesh, Windows recovers ridiculously quickly from a hibernate, somewhere in the order of 10 seconds… I wonder if I’ll ever shut it down again? [...]

He then goes on to the fact that as with every other install of Windows, Vista will reinstall it’s own boot loader.  Messing up what was a smooth running set up.  There was a fairly simple step by step given in the comments to fix it.  But the over-lying
issue meantioned is that even though Microsoft is supposed to be embracing Open Source.  They continue to do their best to force a person to HAVE to rely on their product.  Even if it means “accidently” breaking a competitors while doing it.

Tags: Interesting, Linux, Microsoft, Windows