First of all, I must recommend that you have a full backup process in place before making any major modification to your windows machine. I say this because windows can be persnickety about major system changes. The windows system can also be unfriendly to other operating systems, particularly non-windows-based ones, being installed on the same machine, in terms of having alternate bootloaders installed and so on. If it were me, I would be sure to have the windows 7 cd available in case things went south. Some other things that may offer limited restore capability, but that are not guaranteed to work are: using the windows 7 recovery disk to repair your startup process if necessary: http://neosmart.net/...m-repair-discs/ , and making a complete system image with the GNU/Linux-based tool from clonezilla.org . That being said, and as a public service announcement, I must mention that losing windows 7 would not be a problem, and you'd always be able to easily reinstall your OS, if you were using the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) GNU/Linux as your primary operating system. Using GNU/Linux as the primary operating system is what I do, and it is also what I recommend as an IT Professional of 13 years.

As for installing Ubuntu GNU/Linux on your windows 7 machine, why not install Ubuntu 10.10 GNU/Linux inside windows? Ubuntu 10.10 does this very well with the built-in wubi loader. All you have to do is insert your Ubuntu 10.10 cd into the computer after you have already booted and logged into windows. Then run the Ubuntu cd, answer a few easy questions, and Ubuntu will be installed inside windows. When you install Ubuntu using this method, it is installed inside windows (removable via add/remove programs) in a folder called Ubuntu(at C:\Ubuntu) on your ntfs partition. The Ubuntu is then simply added to the windows 7 startup options as opposed to loading the FOSS GRUB bootloader for booting into Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu does not replace the windows 7 boot process using this installation method, it's a lot safer in terms of having windows 7 work against you for installing the alternate OS. Also, if you want to remove Ubuntu, you will not have to resize partitions or change any bootloader, just run the add/remove programs dialog in windows and use it to remove Ubuntu.

Here's a video that shows the installation process: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ArEWYo5Q1ag

To get an idea as to what the boot process would look like after you install Ubuntu inside Windows 7, checkout this video: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=jVgEsZev-OQ

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Shannon VanWagner
humans-enabled

PS: To learn more about Ubuntu, checkout http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Maverick

Moreover, if you're really not happy seeing GRUB starting windows, you can do it in reverse, using Windows' bootloader to load the linux bootloader. (Use EasyBCD for this.)

Sneftel, i remember you from back in 2003! Good to see you again! I was Sluginator back then, but I was and still am a programming noobie. I just enjoy this forum so much! You guys have been so helpful!

Update: I installed Ubuntu on my VMWare player, and even fixed the annoying beep you hear when you backspace too many times on the console screen. Now I hear the cool sound of a water drop.

I have 4 gigs of ram. Should I devote more than 512 of that to Ubuntu. Also, I want to do all the cool stuff with Ubuntu and learn how to become a command-line master. Is Ubuntu good for that?

Swiftcoder, how did you make that cool avatar? That's how I want my game characters to look. I'm not too good at drawing, but love ascii art. Maybe it's the same thing. I remember seeing an atari game programmed using ascii art for the character sprites and thought that was a wonderful idea.

I can't believe how much help I am getting. I want to be as good a programmer as an open-source engineer, but I doubt that will happen. But still, I don't think I'm living up to my potential on Windows. I feel stifled.

Update: I'm listening to youtube on ubuntu. Check this video out: Paul Gilbert-- Metal Dog arguably the prettiest guitar solo in the world.

Well, I have an AMD64 processor but downloaded the i386 version. It was working fine until I tried to install some applications from the linux distro cd on ubuntu. Why would most of an i386 cd work on my amd64 computer? The only problem I have is that I need a driver to get wireless internet.