[lug] AWS Installfest-in-the-Cloud -- VMBox install?

[Davide Del Vento]

> Is there any reason that Ubuntu or Fedora or Ret Hat of any of the
> major Linux distributors don't make that a standard install option.
> Surely, I'm not alone (as a non-IT pro) in wanting an easy painless
> migration path to Linux -- without going cold turkey on Windows
> (assuming I can ever get off it entirely).

RedHat has given up on the desktop/laptop and cares only about servers
now (I can dig the link if needed).
I don't know about Fedora (but I guess it'll be like Ubuntu, just
without the LTS - hope that others will comment about it)
A recent Ubuntu (I recommend v10.04 because it's LTS see here:
http://blog.javacorner.net/2011/01/eventually-migrated-to-ubuntu-1004.html
) has a painless xen package that should be able to boot your windows
partition just out of the box (I say "should" instead of "is" because
last time I saw windows it was in a year that didn't start with "2").
I've been told by a couple of coworkers that now xen works
considerably better than VMware for virtualization.

Moreover, if your hardware is not too old, it should have
virtualization support build into the processor, which means you don't
get ANY overhead from a virtual machine compared to running natively
(see for example here:
http://perilsofparallel.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-hardware-virtualization-works-part.html
)

So, in the end, it could be harder said than done, especially if you
already have a partition you'd like to wipe. Give it a try, many
people (including my father-in-law, surely not a computer guy at all)
found it much easier to use Ubuntu than windows (sic!) for various
reasons, including automatic updates via repositories instead of the
mess they do under M$.

Have fun!

Davide