This statement is at best a half-truth as it really depends on the skill set of the person trying to install Linux along side Windows. Despite this, I hear people stating this as a fact nearly everyday. Drives me bananas.

When it comes to running multiple operating systems on a computer, I think that most distro providers do little to deter their users from making what can be serious partitioning mistakes.

Figuring that it must be the end user's sole responsibility to "get it right," people are often seen in the various users forums complaining how Linux deleted their Windows install. Clearly there has to be a more consistent way of addressing this.

One near foolproof approach is to run with a dedicated Linux PC. Not a practical solution for everyone, but a solid option nonetheless.

The second approach might be to make a disk image of your Windows installation. This way if the dual-booting setup goes wrong and repairing the MBR doesn't help due to the partitioning being done improperly, the end user is not totally out of luck trying to recover their Windows files.

Even with backups, the end user often finds themselves in a position where they do not understand how to avoid partitioning and MBR issues in the first place.

In this article, I'll be addressing this...

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