Using Windows 7 with Linux.
How do you do it best?
Why would it be useful?
Thanks.
Actually, I don't use Ubuntu in any Dual boot configuration, personally. I've helped friends/colleagues setup Windows 7 and Ubuntu dual boots.
If you install Ubuntu First on the first partition and windows Vista/7 on the second partition, Ubuntu will replace the MBR on the system boot partition with it's own, which will load GRUB on startup. when you just have Linux, that is all that is in the GRUB boot loader.
Installing Windows Vista/7 has the effect that Windows detects the other operating system and creates an entry in the Boot Configuration for it (I almost said "boot.ini" but Windows Vista/7 have changed that mechanism). Windows Vista/7, as with other Windows Versions before them, save the boot sector code for Linux (well, it's not important what the OS is, it still does it with a DOS install too) in a special file. when you choose Linux from the boot menu, it executes that "boot sector" as if it was being booted from. This sort of behaviour can be seen when you install XP and Vista or 7; selecting "Previous version of windows" in effect loads the XP boot sector, which displays the XP boot menu- the XP boot menu has no knowledge of the Vista or 7 installations. Of course this requires that you have at least three OS's, XP, an OS that appears on XP's boot menu, and windows Vista or 7.
Installing in the other order is something I am less sure of. I'm not familiar enough with GRUB to know it's particulars as I am with the windows boot loader and boot files, however, my experience with dual booting XP and 2000 tells me that it's OS agnostic; it doesn't really matter what the other OS actually is.
In the case of Windows Vista and 7; they changed the boot method; now instead of NTLDR, it loads GRLDR, and the boot information is not loaded from boot.ini but from some other file. It still uses the same mechanisms to boot from the drive as always, they just changed the code behind them. Ubuntu, as far as I've seen, saves the previous MBR code just as windows does.
Personally if I had to do it I'd install Ubuntu first, mostly because I had some issues with larger hard drive partition locations and some older distro (6 or 7) as well as the fact that even though it is not the same as the XP boot setup Vista and 7's boot configuration options are still less foreign then those of GRUB or LILO.
Which reminds me, I've always preferred LILO over GRUB, for some reason. perhaps it's because I've preferred slackware as a Linux distribution.
