If you install ubuntu on a system with Winders, it pretty much handles everything. The partition editor shrinks the Windows partition, keeps the recovery partition, installs linux on an EXT4 partition, and puts grub in the MBR.
From install, onward, you select which OS to run at boot. Linux in Virtualbox with Winders host is almost as efficient on modern systems with hardware virtualization. Cygwin is annoying - you keep running into Winders. Microsoft's development tools cost money, have so many variants it's confusing, and carry a high overhead in the IDE to help nitwits program. Your friend is better off in linux using the boost C++ libraries. Ray Parks From: Owen Densmore [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 05:31 PM To: Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] [FRIAM] Dual booting in the Window's world I have a friend who has an AMD processor based Windows system (Windows 7 IIRC). He wishes to convert it to a dual-boot Windows/Linux system, with two bootable partitions, one for each OS. Many years ago I did this sort of thing, but a lot has changed. Do any of us have experience with this? A good pointer/site on how to do this? He does seem to be confused a bit about all the possibilities: - Virtual Box - Cygwin - Dual boot (with both partitions being bootable) - Which distro to use (He mainly wants to do development w/ C/C++ within the mathematics world) I was surprised that he thought it necessary to use linux .. I presumed he could do everything he wanted to do in Windows itself but apparently compilers were not there and that sort of thing. I do know on the mac you can install a "developer's sdk" for free (have to register) and presumed that was also possible with Windows. Any pointers much appreciated! And alternatives too. -- Owen
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