On Sun, Oct 21 07:52:07 PM Jim Sabatke wrote:
Actually, it has occurred to me. It seems that M$ has done everything possible to keep a second OS from being loaded. That being said, it also seems that when I read about people successfully getting Suse to dual boot, they don't give any details that I find useful, and that is frustrating. Of course that is not Suse's fault either and I recognize that.
Jim
MS doesn't make this decision, the manufacturer does. The main consideration is expediency. There is no grand conspiracy (at least there wasn't at the oem where I worked). There is a consistent assumption though, which is that the user does not need to/will not ever want to/we don't care even if he does - change the machine. There's no allowance for flexibility because it's presumed, whether the user likes it or not, that the machine will remain as purchased. As I posted prev, the oem develops its own architecture and code for media recovery. I've seen quite a variety of methodologies. The issue is that without reliable documentation on how it's been done, the user can easily lock his/herself out of using the recovery system. And it may have been done in such a way that there is simply no way to change it other than taking over the machine with your own media (which with W$ means getting a retail license). With this machine the likely choice for installing Linux would be reclaimed space from sda2. But the primary problem is probably sda4, which needs to be converted to an extended primary to allow logical partition(s) to be created and therefore the 4GB FAT must be moved into the logical chain. This machine has one of the more egregious recovery setups I've seen. And btw, there are no product keys to re-use. The machine has an oem license. It is not "installable" retail media. The OS is in an image that its recovery just overlays back on a disk, returning it to its exact factory state. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org