It's been a loooong time since I last wrote. The past several years have seen a huge shift in my career and technical objectives. I've gone from working almost exclusively on code to selling software as a technical sales engineer to now managing a team of technical gurus doing sales worldwide. As a result, my time for tinkering has slowed considerably. I do want to update everyone by saying that I am now back to Linux after many years stuck in a Windows world for work. My current employer is focused on open source technology and as such encourages us to use Linux and other open source tools in any way we can. I am now the proud owner of a Dell Laptop that has dual-boot setup for Windows and Ubuntu 18.04. I'll try to write up a post here in the next bit about my experiences so far, but my quick and dirty summary is that you should definitely give it a shot. There are a few hiccups to overcome, but, for the most part, it's been really nice transitioning back. Until
It's fairly easy to turn any ISO (such as the Windows 7 Professional ISO from MSDN) into a bootable USB stick using UNetbootin for Linux. However, I just found out today that UNetbootin doesn't support Windows-required NTFS-formatted USB sticks. Therefore, it's impossible to create the bootable USB with the huge (3.8 GB or so) ISO. Luckily, there is a workaround. Follow these steps and you should be good to go. Format your USB stick as FAT32 in GParted . You might have to adjust partitions at this stage, mine was setup correctly. Open UNetbootin (install if not found on your system) and input the options up to where it shows the USB partition to install to. Mine was set to /dev/sdb1 - Don't actually try to create the installer USB from the ISO at this point, however. That won't work because it's set to FAT32, not NTFS. Leave UNetbootin open as is. Reopen GParted if you closed it (not necessary). Format the USB in GParted as NTFS this time. You *might*