Dual booting or Bare Metal + VM at install fests ? was: One doubt about a place for an install party

[Fabián Rodríguez]

> [...]
>
>>
>     I would strongly advise against that. Most new machines use all 4
>     primary partitions, and rolling back such an install if someone
>     changes their mind is problematic.
>
>
> Why would you roll back an installation? and why would someone change
> his mind in the middle of an install party?

I have no clue. It's happened to me and I've since decided I'll never do
something that will put me in a situation where I have to spend 2+ hours
to restore a system to its original/previous condition.

Bare metal is much easier. But if someone comes to an install party
wanting to dual-boot, I'll be very convincing not to do so, and either
go the Wubi way or the VM way.

When GRUB explodes, you will witness instant changes of mind and "put it
back as it was before" requests.

>  
>
>     Unless you know your way around GRUB and / or you have the
>     original DVD, I would never install Ubuntu as a dual-boot on a new
>     machine for a new user.
>      
>
>
> The person who is installing must have some experience installing
> Ubuntu, of course you dont allways know everything but when installing
> we use our Ubuntu Gurus :)

I don't know many Gurus that want to spend the entire install fest with
ONE problem :) I know my stuff but I prefer to do baby steps - or bare
metal steps :D

I am not going to try to convince anyone but after 4 years doing this
(Ubuntu support) full time at Canonical, I'll stick with safer methods.

>  
>
>     In fact I've found it's easier to convert a Windows install to a
>     virtual machine, then wipe a system and install Ubuntu bare-metal,
>     then use VirtualBox (from Oracle) to get back 100% Windows
>     functionality. That's more than the typical 5-minute pitch though :D
>
>  
> In an install party we never install Windows at all, that is why we
> use dual boot if a person wishes to keep their Windows, we encourage
> people to use Ubuntu when they want to so the change is not that
> radical and hope that they forget about the W

I didn't say I installed Windows. I explained how *I* preferred to
preserve it (making a VM, going bare metal, etc). Dual booting is really
the worse case scenario IMO for any advocacy. I'll just cite this one
bug (unfixed since 9.10, priority high, in progress):

grub fails after running Windows
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/441941?comments=all


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