Dual booting ubuntu/win7 opinions

[darkod]

Yes, I see where you are coming from Darkod. But I've got to say that when I first dual booted with 12.04 in the "conventional" way allowing Ubuntu to do it's own thing, the first set of big updates that came in for Ubuntu broke the installation and it wouldn't boot. This included a new kernel amongst other things. I fixed it easily but the next day a big update for Windows came in and that broke Windows and it wouldn't boot. As the machine was going down to Exeter University with a novice in these matters I decided to use the guide above to avoid as much trouble as possible. I can say that once it was installed, the same updates came in again and neither system was affected in any way and both booted easily. No problem. So far it's been perfect...although running for just a few weeks now. But I'll be monitoring the situation. If it turns out not to be as good as many are saying, I'll change it.

You probably had other issues which went away when you reinstalled.
In ubuntu, updates can rarely break grub2 even if the package is getting updates too. If you are doing an upgrade to a more recent version, that can sometimes take a wrong turn.
In windows, also, updates shouldn't really touch the bootloader, especially the way the windows bootloader is set up. If there is some utility running in the background that doesn't like having a non-windows MBR (there was something like that few years back with HP and Dell but I think they are not doing it any more), that is also a different topic.

In any case, you should use what works best for you, but I just wanted to point out that the problems you had are not general and that link shouldn't be used as a general way to install.

I am dual booting win7 Ult with ubuntu on both my desktop and netbook, doing all updates in both OSs and it has never in 3 years (since I discovered ubuntu) touched my bootloader.

[Starfleet]

Darkod, thanks very much for your opinion on this. You have much greater knowleage than I do on this subject. As I say, so far everything is going ok on the machine I was talking about, and also one other that I did in the same way. Both high spec laptops dual booted with Win7 home prem. But me, I'm just not a Windows fan I'm afraid and can live without it just fine. What a pleasure Ubuntu is to use and I find it much more useful than my old Windows installations too.

Thanks...

Ian

[Jobbo256]

Thank you everyone for your advice. I am currently using 11.10 (the reason I was using 10.10 was because that was one of my favourites and it still used gnome classic) I still need to fix my windows problems, but I am progressing. Thanks all.