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Gentoo Linux and Wndows XP

I

imported_michaelpatrick33

Platinum Member
Hey guys and gals

I have Windows XP Pro running on serial ATA raid 0 and would like to install gentoo linux. I have an ide drive (80 gigi) on the pata ide channel and wondered if I could install Linux freely on that drive and keep the two OS's completely separate. Can I set up a dual boot system if Linux is on the D drive. (Raid 0 = C drive) New to Linux so I wanted to to tinker and have fun with an actual hardrive driven Linux. Thanks
 
Michael, I had no problem with Mandrake10 and my Windows dual boot of XP and Me. If you use the
Grub bootloader it will automatically include your Windows OS's. If you are a complete Newbie, Gentoo
may not be the best to start out with and Fedora 2 had problems with dual boots. In my opinion MDK10
is a very good distro to become familiar with Linux. But having said all that, I can't really speak to the
SATA Raid 0 issue having no experience with that kind of setup.
 
Yeah, it will work just fine, but you will probably have some headaches installing gentoo if you haven't really used linux much before. It is fairly straight forward to install if you read the instructions very very carefully and follow them exactly.

Honestly though, it'll be a good learning experience as you'll learn right off the bat where all the important config files are and what not. Also, if you get stuck during the linux install, you can just reboot to windows (no problem) and ask on the forums for help. Then reboot of the cd and tinker away some more.
 
Also be sure to make a rescue or whatever CD for WinXP in case you panic and need to get windows going right away. However you can always reinstall the boot loader per instructions in the install directions.

Also in Gentoo, nothing is automaticly done for you. You do everything manually. edit: (at least during most of the install. Portage is all pretty much automatic.)
 
I think Mandrake might be a better first time user of Linux. What do you all think? I am getting dual raptors but not necessarily for raid. I don't think desktop raid is that much better but I was wondering if I could have Windows XP and Mandrake on a raid 0 drive together to give Linux the better drives or would XP (installed first with raid drivers not allow Mandrake to put itself onto the raid array along with it? If that is a dumb question but that is why I am asking. To learn!
 
I just got done downloading and installing Suse 9.1 on a machine that has XP on it tonight. It was no more difficult than installing Windows, except that I had to guess between NIS and LDAP when it asked me what kind of network I was on.
I've never tried Linux before, so can't speak to other distros, but Suse was straightforward with a nice GUI that is really similar to Windows. I actually felt like I was cheating 🙂 I thought I was going to have to make 5 different partitions and learn a bunch of dos-like commands but there was none of that.
 
cool. I am getting my new rig in a couple of weeks and wanted to either have Linux and xp on one machine or I might put Linux on my older machine to fool around with. Did you haved to make a different partition? When I setup my new machine I probably won't use raid but I will have two raptors 74's and thought I could have about a 30 gig partition on my second one for Linux! Would that work?
 
The weird thing is, it didn't ask me where I wanted it. It just did it. I had 2 partitions, and when I'm in Windows I don't see the linux install anywhere on either partition. It was blank. I understand that Windows can't see Linux partitions, so maybe that's why it only sees an empty disk. I only glanced around briefly though.

I guess I'll format the 2nd partition and see if Suse disappears 🙂

And since Linux makes new partitions for everything, I am pretty sure you can spread them out on different drives and partitions if you like, so that would be entirely up to you. I don't know jack, though, I just do some reading here and there.
 
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