I’ve got to say, at first when I played with Ubuntu I thought it was the most shit-est flavor of Linux ever! But that was a long time ago before they got popular. When ver 7 came out, I tired it out, but got feed up with it because it would read my partition tables correctly and it wouldn’t allow me to dual boot with my windows machine. Well times have changed and the Ubuntu community has responded.

With the install of ver 7.04 I still have the boot problem. How could you not automatically see that I already have a master boot record and just add that info onto the new Grub boot loader?! Well after a couple of minutes searching on the forums I’ve found a solution and by gully, im a happy camper now. Im actually tri-booting, since it read the Vista boot loader!

Heres the info if Ubuntu doesn’t read your windows MBR after installing.

Type “sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst” (without the quotes), then enter your password.

When the editor pops up, add this under to the one that looks similar to it.

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Then File>Save. Thats it. Next time you restart it should give you an option for XP.

After you get all that, the fun actually begins. I found this article that actually gives you 7 tips on what to add after the Ubuntu installation, written by Matthew Newton from PcWorld. All of them are really helpful for making Ubuntu run/look good. It even provides all the commands you need!

My Picks are:
2. Fix your screen resolution.
3. Install Automatix (Great program that provides easy program installs.)
6. Try Beryl for unbeatable eye candy.

Once you get everything perfected, there should really be no reason to go back to windows. Dont forget “Wine” always you to run windows programs within Ubuntu.
Give this a try, you wont be disappointed.
Homepage: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Download:  http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Request Cds: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

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