Goodbye Windows!

I recently got my hands on a copy of Cedega's game emulator, and I successfully installed Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and CSS and have them running. XP no longer has any reason to exist. How sad.

My sorrow aside, I'd like to salvage the 25GB or so that Windows is sitting right now. The only problem is that it is the first partition. Can I possible format XP's partition and merge it into Ubuntu's partition, making a "clean" Ubuntu install? I'm asking this b/c I really don't want to reinstall Ubuntu, my icons, themes, tweaks, Beryl, etc. Any suggestions?

PS; if what I'm asking for is possible, how big is the associated risk?

 

I posted on how I moved to a new hard drive under Linux... it may give you some ideas. You will basically have to a) change grub's configuration before you move the partition (you want it using the primary partition for the config file, rather than the secondary). It'll be difficult... I'd suggest just reformatting and using the first partition as a data partition, mounting it under /media somewhere. It won't matter for performance, you'll still have access to the space, and you won't risk nuking your configuration or anything worse.

Welcome to the Windows-free world

 

Is there a linux equivalent of Acronis or Norton Ghost? If so, couldn't you just clone your current disk, so you can reformat to your heart's content without any loss of data?

 

Not a direct equivalent of Ghost. Most Linux geeks do like I did, and just use dd and multiple drives or partitions You can move around some partitions and such using the "qtparted" tool from a LiveCD. That may be exactly what you're looking for, too. Just make sure you have your install disk handy in case you need to reinstall grub.

 

So I have to use qtparted to get rid of Windows and make Ubuntu the only primary partition. What commands do I need to rewrite GRUB?

 

You just need to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to change the lines so that root = hd(0,1) would be root = hd(0,0). I think I haven't done it myself, so I'm just guessing here. You might also consider "sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub", which shouldn't hurt at any rate.

It could be as simple as making those edits and typing grub-install /dev/sda. I'm assuming you have an SATA hard drive... if you don't, replace /dev/sda with /dev/hda

 

One thing to be careful of with grub is whether you installed it to the MBR. If so, you should be able to do as suggested by Pitabred. If not, you probably should install grub to the MBR first. Otherwise, when you change your grub configuration things may not go so well. Oh and qparted should be perfect for your needs. Also, maybe have a liveCD or some sort around in case something goes wrong. Oh, and make BACKUPS!

 

Quick question: is Cadega subscription based?

 

Thanks for the help everybody.

And yes, Cedega is subscription based.

 

Looking at their site is a pain, there are a lot of advertising fluff and marketing gimmicks. Why can't they just make good software and leave it that?

 

I'd recommend this too. Why try to merge partitions ? There is no need.