Hi installing on windows dual boot

[Daniel Staal]

On Wed, July 27, 2011 7:58 am, Polytropon wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:06:57 +0000, Ganesh Khedkar wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>      I am new to FreeBSD , just wanted to give one suggestion that ,
>> Ubuntu linux have given one
>> Nice facility to user that they can easily install Ubuntu in windows and
>> any drive we want .
>>     Even we can assign size to that drive . So cant we provide this
>> facility to our user .
>> So that people can experience freeBSD.
>
> Currently you cannot install FreeBSD from withing "Windows",
> if this is what you mean. FreeBSD is an operating system
> that needs to be booted _on_ the machine it should be
> installed to, as the installer requires that OS - just
> the same way you cannot simply "try" a "Windows" by
> installing it into, let's say... Solaris. :-)

I think the original poster was referring to the fact that Ubuntu actually
has an installer that can run as a Windows application, and will resize
your hard drive for you and install a dual-boot setup.  It does this while
you are running Windows, although it has to reboot the machine.  (Which it
will do automatically for you.)

It's very slick, and would be an interesting addition to FreeBSD, but I
don't think it's likely to be something that will get worked on soon. 
Ubuntu is targeted at non-technical users, especially ones not likely to
have run Linux (or any other open-source OS) before.  FreeBSD is largely
targeted at more technical users, and at the server space instead of the
desktop.  So such a tool would be a high priority for Ubuntu (as it makes
installing the OS much easier for a newbie), it's not the top of the list
for FreeBSD.

Daniel T. Staal

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