I'm back on windows...First Episode

A couple of months ago, due to various reasons that I will go into on another post I had to go back to using one of my old laptops (Pentium M, 0.5G of memory). Former one was monster Dell with 2G of RAM, dual core 2.something GHz and 7200RPM disks, so I figured this new-old one was going to be a nightmare. I therefore decided to pursue any geek's dream and install a Linux OS on it. Since I have customers and projects that still require C# programming, I thought I'd go for dual boot, unless I can make it work on mono (yet another subject for another post, but bottom line - I don't think you wanna go there...). Last time I worked on linux it was when Redhat was still freely available and no Fedora. This time I went for Suse 10.3. I put the CD in, it recognized all of my devices, including the wireless network during the installation, which allowed it to download updates and a couple of hours later it was all done with.
Oh--MY--GOD. I was very impressed. So easy to install. Like always, everything that I needed already installed (from Office to Gimp to Eclipse ). It took me another 30 minutes to find out that whatever I didn't have installed already, I could use the most impressive YAST tool to automatically get - I swear it's easier than windows, and certainly easier than it used to be on good-old Redhat.
Then I went on to install XP. First mistake. Trashed my MBR, no going back. But wait - all the posts I read said having a dual boot with Suse is a classic. Ah, OK - they said you need to install XP first, then suse. Why on earth would that matter? Well, when I did it the second time, I understood.
Disk reformatted. XP was installed (terrible experience - had to download half the machine drivers from Dell. Shame on you M$ - Novell Suse had it all figured out, no intervention required). Then I put in the Suse disk. BAMMMM! It comes out with a message saying something like "Knock knock Neo, you seem to be installing on a machine that already has windows installed on it. Allow me to suggest the following - I will shrink the windows partition to 10G out of the available 40, then format the remaining 30G for myself, and install Linux there. How about that? Oh, I will also automatically map you windows disk on the linux OS and call it... Windows"
Amazing. What's even more amazing is that it managed to do it perfectly.
Also - Suse met all expectations, and actually performed faster than my Windows was performing on the former monster laptop. What a pathetic comparison, I know...

Anyways, this post is episode 1 and since it is named "Back on Windows", you'd have to now wonder with all the great things I have to say about Suse Linux, what can happen in the next episode. Since I have no time left, I promise to write the next post soon (but not right now). Anyways, if there's one thing you're going to take from this post - remember to always install Windows first on a dual-boot machine - and then install Linux. Oh - and format Windows to FAT32 not NTFS.
That's it. Catch you later.