Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Linux, OS X and Windows Woes

This is another dig at OS X, I don't set out to rubbish OS X, but it just needs doing; like washing dirty clothes or cleaning your teeth.

Windows occupies approximately 1.8GB of harddrive space after patching, which is a fair big amount. Just think, 1.8x10^9. 1 800 000 000 Bytes.

This is still 10 times smaller in magnitude than OS X which occupies more than 18GB with alot of program patches not installed. I say this because it ran out of room when I tried to patch it up from the Apple Software Update.

18 000 000 000 Bytes

This is even after deleting the iWork '06 Trial (I spend £1600 to get a half decent laptop, and they give me TRIAL SOFTWARE) which weighs in at 2.6GB from memory; and then they tell me that Windows is bloated.

Where on MIDGARD does all this space get gobbled up?! It can't be all the pretty graphics, though I'm sure they have a part to play, it can't be the applications since they're all a bit small and crap anyway. Which leads me to believe that it's just bucketloads of device drivers, ready to accept the most obscure bit of hardware imaginable. I don't like the fact that space is being taken up by drivers for hardware I don't and never will own. They should make it Linux where it gets stuff as and when it's needed or chosen to install.

This is the main reason why I don't have a dual boot MacBook Pro anymore, since it renders the Windows partition almost useless for installing any amount of games on.

So I thought, "I know! I'll be a right smart-arse and install Ubuntu besides Windows!". How I wish it was as easy as it's supposed to be. I had a working Windows installation with free partitions ready to put Ubuntu Linux and the swap drive partition onto, so I then booted into the Ubuntu Linux CD. After it had loaded it came up that the partition was just 93GB of free space with the 200MB EFI Boot Drive. Obviously this wasn't right so I quit without making any changes (or so I thought) and found that Ubuntu had wiped my MBR so that Windows was now unbootable.

I was pretty annoyed. To say the least.

So then I thought, "I know! I'll be a right know-it-all and partition it with Linux and leave it unformatted but still partitioned so that Windows can read it!". So after partitioning I quit the installer and then booted into the Windows install Predictably for me, Windows didn't recognize the partitions. Overall I've had to reinstall Windows for the 3th time that night. T'was a terrible night, especially waiting for OS X to read and copy its two DVDs (!?!?!?!?) worth of junk so that I could program in something vaguely Linux-like. 20 or so gigabytes is much too high a price to pay just to program in a poofy GUI.

So to summarize, here is the nightmare I went thru:

  • Install attempt 1
    • Had a working Windows install, repartitioned using Partition Magic (which usually works for me) to get some free partitions
    • Rebooted into the Ubuntu installation, it didn't recognize the partitions so I quit
    • Came back to a blinking DOS cursor. FUN

  • Install attempt 2
    • Reinstalled Windows with some free partitions ready for Linux and got it all nice and shiny, (ie drivers installed and Media Center Skin put into place)
    • Rebooted into the Ubuntu installation, it didn't recognize the partitions so I quit
    • Came back to a blinking DOS cursor. FUN AGAIN

  • Install attempt 3
    • Reinstalled OSX with a big partition ready for Windows
    • Read half a book (CS Lewis' Mere Christianity for the curious)
    • Tried to patch OS X, it ran out of harddrive space even though it had a generous 18GB for it
    • Got thoroughly disgusted and just quit OS X, this actually was fun

  • Install attempt 4
    • Reinstalled Windows and took up the entire partition
    • So now basically I'm back to pre Install attempt 1. What an amazing use of a whole evening. I had a lot of fun
Oh, and BootCamp will expire when OS X Tabby comes out. >_<. Apple really knows how to screw the public.