[CALUG] SuSE and Ubuntu dual boot

[Russell Evans]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:20:23 -0400
"Rajiv Gunja" <opn.src.rocks at gmail.com> wrote:

> See, I dont beleive in sharing windows and linux partitions. If at
> all I need to write, I have captive-ntfs installed, so I can mount
> the NTFS partition with RW access. With Xandros as my desktop, I dont
> need to mount the NTFS partitions, by default, they are mounted when
> the OS is installed and made available to root. With some editing
> skills, we can get the normal user to mount and use them too (vi
> on /etc/fstab).

But if you need a file from the linux side when you are in MS Windows
what do you do? Really most of the files issues I've seen with dual
boots are email related. Someone needs a file, but it is in the email
client's mail store, and the only way to get at it is to boot into the
other OS, run the client and save the file.

I forgot about the persuasiveness of USB thumb drives these days
too. If you have one, you don't really need fat32 partition on the
hard drive. My bad.

> The main reason I dont like sharing is that, a trojan, which is
> written for a dual boot desktop, will see its way into linux from the
> shared fat32 partition.

I agree it could get to the shared partition, but I don't see how
it would get executed. You'll have to educate me on that.  

> As long as we keep windows and windows programs far from linux, we
> will be safe.

I'm a bit more paranoid so I don't see any practice as really safe.
More like safe enough, if anything, but it's not like I trust my
knowledge to even say safe enough :-) I am always looking for someone
explain something I just don't see. There is so much to learn and so
little time. 

> For me, windows is not worth running on my computer, so it runs under
> VMware only. 

Doesn't Microsoft own VMware now? So you trust Microsoft products
enough to let them run on your Linux machines? OK.

>So from VMware, I mount my local linux directories via
> samba.

Wait a minute, I'm confused; you're allowing Windows access to your
Linux directories via samba, but you think a shared partition, that
doesn't have system binaries on it, isn't safe? Are we talking read
only or something? I'm very confused.

> Ofcourse, not many people can be without windows, neither can I.
> Since there are certain programs which works only on windows.

Having had to come back into the MS world after a long period of
working outside of it, it seems to me there are more Linux tools that
don't run on MS Windows than the other way around. 

I see my coworkers doing things in Windows, but doing those things so
inefficiently, that I really wonder if anyone has really looked at
the TCO of using MS Windows, or maybe even OSX in a business. I watch my
coworkers transfer output by hand to paper because they can't copy it
digitally, I see them eye grepping because they can't search a file for
multiple things at once. I see them miss the thing they are looking
for using "find" with it's search up or search down stupidity. I
see so many MS Windows programs that just barely make it to
"useful", but hardly any that make it to "make my job easier".

Sorry, I'll give up the soap box now. My bad. 

Thank you
Russell