Is it really safe to choose the "Install Ubuntu alongside Windows" option from the Ubuntu installation program?
I never used that option, instead I used other tools such as partition magic or windows 7's disk tool to resize my partitions.
Since I'm going to install Ubuntu across a lot windows (XP, Vista and 7) machines. It would not be nice to damage those Windows partitions.
What is your experience? Can I use this feature without concerns?
Having done this several times, I have never encountered any problems with installing Ubuntu alongside Windows. It has always worked for me exactly as advertised. However, I would still never do it without making sure I had backups of all my important data and documents.
As for creating new partitions and resizing them, it seems to work extremely well in the Ubuntu installation process, but if you need to move a Windows partition, I would highly recommend doing it with Windows tools; Windows doesn't generally like to be moved.
I also just installed Ubuntu from Windows 7 platform; it is quite smooth and you can choose which boot partition you want when you restart either Windows 7 or Ubuntu. Enyoy it!
It SHOULD work, but sometimes it has some glitches. I manually partitioned the hard disk myself, and then let ubuntu CD to install along with windows without paying too much attention to the process. Of course, I went back and forth for several iterations. To the end, I was surprised by the numerous number of unused swap partitions. It turns out the installer automatically re-partitioned my partition, left the swap partition untouched and recreated swap partition with in the linux partition I meant for the root partition. I went 3 iterations and ended up with 4 swap partitions (one created by me and 3 by installer). If you are doing the partitioning yourself, you better choice the 3rd option during the installation, telling the installer exactly what partition is for what. Give too much freedom to the installer can be harmful for the health of your computer. :)
