This thread sorta goes with that other one but i dont want to take over his thread so i made a new one. If i want Linux and Windows on the same computer, and already have Windows on it then how do i put Linux on it so that i can choose what one to use when i start up my computer every time? If you do know how to do this plaese leave a detail description so i dont screw up and delete all my Windows files and stuff. ______________________________________________________________ "Here''s my message to everyone out there: I don''t want you to kill yourself. But if you''re gonna kill someone else, kill yourself first." -Adam Carolla

First you need some space for Linux, either a new hard drive or have some unallocated space on your primary. Then, it probably depends on what distro you use. I am currently sitting on a dual-boot Windows XP/RedHat Linux 9.0, using GRUB. Gah, whatever distro you use, you should read the section on this issue in the installation manual. When we know what distro, it is easier to answer.

EDIT: heh, this post wasn't for this tread!

[edited by - owl on December 8, 2003 10:21:43 PM]

Hello,

Depending on how your hard drive is set up, you will need to make room for linux. This can be done with a program called Partition Magic. I''m not sure of others, maybe someone else can post other similar programs to re partition your drive for you.

I would recomend making at least 5 Gigs for linux if you can. As for what distro to use, I use Gentoo. I think that''s a great distro, however, if you are new to linux, and just want to try it out you might want to check out Mandrake. I heard Red Hat was not going to continue making home user versions of it''s distro, just the corperate versions, so I would avoid them due to lack of official support. Another cool distro I discovered recently is Knoppix. This is a version that you can run right off the CD... just boot the cd, and the system auto detects all your hardware, and loads a nice KDE environment for you... This is great if you don''t want to, or can''t repartition your hard drive.

Hope this info helps, please feel free to ask any questions you may have, I''ll help you, and anyone else the best I can



Michael Rhodes
Tiger Studios Entertainment
http://www.tigerstudios.net

quote: Original post by mrhodes
I heard Red Hat was not going to continue making home user versions of it''s distro, just the corperate versions,

Link? Is the "home user version" you talk about the normal RedHat Linux distro, or what?

hi,

If you get Mandrake (and probably other distros), it includes a disk partitioner that can resize your windows partition for you.

The Mandrake install is really easy, and includes a bootloader (9.0 used lilo by default, not sure if its GRUB now). This will allow you to select Windows or Linux when your computer first powers up.

Hope this helps
Don the Anonymous

SuSE also does the partition resize, but if you go with that distro, I would suggest you buy the set. I would say, use a newbie-friendly linux distro(Mandrake,Fedora,SuSE), and just install that if you have the free space to install linux, the linux install process will actually detect a windows installation, and set up their bootloader(lilo or grub) to boot to both linux and windows.

quote: Original post by CWizard

quote: Original post by mrhodes
I heard Red Hat was not going to continue making home user versions of it''s distro, just the corperate versions,

Link? Is the "home user version" you talk about the normal RedHat Linux distro, or what?

IIRC, the Red Hat Linux line is no longer supported, and is being discontinued in favour of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They''re telling any current users of the "standard" Red Hat Linux to switch to Fedora.

I recently added Mandrake linux to a Win2K machine. I actually used Partion Magic to partition my drive, although I think the Mandrake one would have worked fine. However, I also wanted the ability to access my windows files from linux. So I converted my NTFS file system to FAT32 (using Partition Magic). The mandrake distro can''t do that (AFAIK). Here''s the advice I was given:

quote: 50MB first linux partition for /boot
512MB or 1GB swap space on second linux partition
10GB third linux partition for /
rest of HD fourth linux partition for /home

All the linux partition should be formatted as ext3 filesystem except for swap. I recommend not using ReiserFS, JFS, or XFS. Ext2 is an inferior version of ext3.

Select custom partition sizing when prompted. Click on the appropriate partition and name the partition from the dropdown list. Same with the filesystem. Do this for the rest of the partitions. Leave the Windows partition alone, but Mandrake should already given the partition name something like /mnt/win_c. When you boot into linux, the windows partition should automatically mounted in linux in /mnt/win_c.

During installation, it will ask you if all the drivers it has found are correct. Make sure you know all the devices in your computer.

Make sure before it reaches at the end of setup that you select lilo for dual booting. I don''t remember what I did, but there is a gotcha step near the end. Just need to pay attention to the menu options during installation.

And of course, remember to backup your Windows data , just in case.

This is generally what I followed, and it worked fine for me. I also have one extra partition as a sort of data directory which both Windows and Linux use (for docs, mail, downloads, etc.)

Tadd
- WarbleWare

quote: Original post by reana1
50MB first linux partition for /boot
512MB or 1GB swap space on second linux partition
10GB third linux partition for /
rest of HD fourth linux partition for /home

All the linux partition should be formatted as ext3 filesystem except for swap. I recommend not using ReiserFS, JFS, or XFS. Ext2 is an inferior version of ext3.

To clarify, ext3 is basically ext2 with journalling.

If you're going to have a seperate /boot partition, I'd use ext2 on that and have it not mounted automatically (add noauto to that line in fstab. That filesystem is going to be so small, and so rarely modified, that journaling isn't really needed. If you want to change your boot setup, you can always mount /boot as root before reinstalling your bootloader.

I'd actually recommend using ReiserFS on your other partitions. When it was new, there were reasons not to recommend it (stability, maturity, etc.), but IMO it's quite mature and stable enough for use now. JFS and XFS, though, are something quite different. They're designed more for high-speed disks in servers. For example, Gentoo recommends XFS only if you have high-speed SCSI disks and a UPS. ReiserFS is much more suited to desktop use; my Linux partition (I have only one plus swap) is ReiserFS.

Seperating /home is generally a good idea, as it means that you can reinstall or switch distributions without losing any of your personal files. If you're going to do that, then your / filesystem should be big enough to hold all your installed applications, but needn't be any bigger. For a 'normal' system, 10GB should be more than enough; consider making / a little smaller if your disk space is limited. If you don't think you're going to be switching distributions any time soon, though, you probably don't need to seperate /home.

IIRC, the default for Mandrake 9 was to have ~512MB of swap, then one third of your remaining space on / and two thirds on /home. I'd go with that for a first time, and format them both with the default filesystem (probably ext3 or reiserfs).

[edit]Closed a <tt> tag. Might help...[/edit]

[edited by - sbennett on December 10, 2003 2:59:02 PM]