My dual-booting conundrum

[zeroblitzt]

Hello all,

I built this new computer (my budget gaming computer) in December. I just recently (2 days ago) put Ubuntu on here, a partition of my 160 gig drive. I really love Ubuntu but it suffers gaming wise - thats common knowledge, the Linux game community is just behind in terms of support.

I dont like partitioning my drives, so I am contemplating (AKA I'm about to push the "buy" button) buying a new harddrive for Linux only.

But my problem with this is: What is the point? What does Linux offer that Windows doesn't offer? How about vice versa? I mean, I don't intend to take this computer to college with me, is it worth spending the money on a new hard drive just to install another OS which will be second bested by Windows? Or should I use Ubuntu as my main OS, and go into Windows only to game? Or should I use a Virtual installation of Windows???

That is my conundrum. And please don't take offense to this; its not meant to be offending. I love Ubuntu. I love Linux. But is this the right time for me to be using them?

I'd appreciate anyone's insight on this; I'll put off ordering this hard drive in the mean time. :)

[fatality_uk]

Do what suits you. I game, I work I Ubuntu. I don't have MS at home or work, I even have eeexubuntu on my eeepc now :)

The gaming thing is overblown. I run ETQW and have a blast on Tremulous, Nexiuz and a few other FPS so I dont need Windows. I am trying to get a few games running under WINE and will do seeing as I have paid for the game.

[em3raldxiii]

No offense at all, zeroblitzt :D

The first thing that everyone is going to say will likely be something like, "what do you use your computer for?"

If you use it for mostly stuff other than gaming, then I would say go with Ubuntu (or some other flavor of LInux) as your primary OS, then use your Windows installation for playing the odd game.

I have no experience with running a virtual box, but I have heard many good things about it. Apparently it's relatively easy, and many games will run perfectly fine in a virtual environment.

Some of the other things you might consider: Since Linux is generally more secure and less prone to viruses and other malware, you can use your Linux installation to repair your Windows installation *when* (not "if") Windows becomes gibbled in some way. Also, you can use your Linux installation to rescue data from your Windows partitions. You can safely browse *questionable* websites with your Linux installation, and you can install some sweet eye-candy on your Linux installation (beryl, compiz-fusion, whatever).

To address gaming, you are right, there are substantially fewer commercial-grade games to play on your Linux box, but there are an increasing number of Open Source games available. Not to mention the fact that many companies (such as ID) are now releasing Linux variants of their major releases.

Now, as far as partitioning is concerned, I am not entirely sure why you would have any difficulty with the notion of partitioning your drive. In many instances it will actually increase your system performance. For example, booting your system from a 30G or smaller partition has historically been measurably faster than booting from a large drive (not sure if that's still the case with SATA2). If your drive is big enough, I don't think you would have any issue with partitioning. Keep in mind that Linux generally has a substantially smaller footprint than Windows. From what I have read/heard, Vista is a hard-drive ... erm ... "waster". ;)

The only real benefit I can see for Windows is the gaming support, and the odd proprietary application.

[Washer]

Do whatever you want. I can help you get over your partition hangups, but I can't magically figure out what you want.

[gn2]

Games just don't work in Virtual PC's, so that's out.

You don't need a new hard drive for Ubuntu, you can run it from a USB flash drive.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ has lots of options.

[zeroblitzt]

It's not so much I'm Afraid of partitioning my drive, its just I'm sort of OCD and I like having everything organized. If I could have Linux on one drive and Windows on another, I'd gladly pay the money. Its just a little quirk I have.

I think I may go ahead and get the new HD though, and install Ubuntu Studio. Then I can start keeping my master tracks on Ubuntu, as opposed to what im doing now (moving one song at a time from my 4 track recorder then deleting the tracks -- so no masters :( ). Yah if you couldn't tell I write music (http://myspace.com/novakkeith);)

[Washer]

You could try thinking all programs on one drive & all data on the other. That's what I do then I play around with different types of filesystems, encrypted containers, etc for redundancy. In a few days im gonna try ZFS on FUSE. Apparently it's possible to have one big pool of data spanning different types of hard drives.