Going to try Linux again, Most User-Friendly w/ 64-bit?

[OmniShinzui]

Ok, about 8 months ago, my hard drive failed, and my Windows XP disc broke. Solution I used? Linux. Well, I had a Burned DVD of the Mandrake (Mandriva its called now) 10.1 Community. Installed, all gravy. Till I tried to do stuff like Installations and Physical Changes (like toolbars, ect). I hard a hard time, and really got frustrated. I spent four days with it till I formatted with Windows XP (I guess using a cd cleaner fixed all the scratches from the disc lol).

Anyways, im ordering my new PC this weekend, and am preparing to format my current hard drive. Thus, ive decided to dual boot Windows XP and a Linux Distro. I have a Cd of Knoppix, but havnt popped it in yet. But, I want a Linux Friendly OS. Preferably taking use of a 64-bit of a AMD processor. First one that I came across was SuSe 64-bit edition. Is it easier to use than Mandrake? Im a real Linux n00b, but since I will have a dual-boot with Windows, I can spend my time learning how to use it, unlike my inpatience with Mandrake earlier this year.

Question, can I install WinXP on my Master Hard Drive, and Create a Partition on my Slave Hard Drive (for Fat32 format), then Dual-Boot? See, I was thinking of using my 160gb Hard Drive as a Master, with Windows XP with Apps and games on it. Then have my 300GB Hard Drive as a slave, with 250gb for Music, Movies, Pictures, ect; Then making a partition on the slave for Linux. Possible?

Thanks in advance, hope I make sense.🙂

 

[phisrow]

Your partitioning scheme should be eminently doable. You'll probably want to use something that sucks less than fat32 for the linux partition, though.

Install procedure should be(others feel free to correct me if I'm wrong):

Install WinXP: format your master drive as you see fit, divide the slave drive into two partitions of the size you wanted. Here you have a choice: if you make the 250gb drive NTFS, Linux will be able to read; but will be iffy about writing(support for this is improving; but it ain't there just yet). FAT32 can be read and written by pretty much anything; but it isn't as good a filesystem. Leave the remaining space empty for Linux.

Install Linux: Ignore the NTFS partitions, divide up the free space according to your preference/your installer defaults/ or 2 gigs of swap, the rest as ext3 or reiserfs mounted as / .

Most modern installers should install GRUB quite cleanly, leaving Windows and Linux accessable at boot. If not, things get a touch interesting; but all is fixable.

As for distros: Suse and Mandrake are both reasonably well regarded; but I'd urge you to try an APT based distro. Canonically this would mean Debian; but Ubuntu is easier on the newbie. They have a 64 bit version. One note about 64 bit distros, though: Support for OSS is generally pretty good on x86-64, as a lot of that code is pretty portable, and the move is happening pretty quickly. Proprietary cruft is much slower to catch up. If you want to run things like closed source drivers, flash plugins, codecs and the like you will typically have more trouble than if you were running a 32 bit system. Don't let this caution frighten you, it is generally possible to get things working(and it's better to avoid closed source nastiness even if you are running a config it supports); but it is a caution to note.

 

[Nothinman]

Im a real Linux n00b, but since I will have a dual-boot with Windows, I can spend my time learning how to use it, unlike my inpatience with Mandrake earlier this year.

I really doubt that will work though, if you're really that impatient you'll probably boot into Linux a dozen times or so and then give up because you have Windows there on the same machine. After a few months you'll wonder why you have the Linux partition there at all since you never use it.

Question, can I install WinXP on my Master Hard Drive, and Create a Partition on my Slave Hard Drive (for Fat32 format), then Dual-Boot? See, I was thinking of using my 160gb Hard Drive as a Master, with Windows XP with Apps and games on it. Then have my 300GB Hard Drive as a slave, with 250gb for Music, Movies, Pictures, ect; Then making a partition on the slave for Linux. Possible?

Sure it's possible, just don't try to install Linux onto the FAT partition. Also you'll most likely have to use the bootloader that comes with Linux, probably grub, since NTLDR is extremely limited.

 

[thehstrybean]

I just downloaded Ubuntu 64-bit for my Turion based lappy. Works great. I tried SuSE 10 AMD64 and couldn't get it to work. I still plan on trying Debian, too...

 

[MGMorden]

Fedora is easy enough to install and use. I've not tried Ubuntu but it seems to be all the rage right now. Gentoo is my favorite distro but you really need to get experienced with it before going to that.

Now, as Nothinman said, dual booting isn't the way to learn Linux. It's not only too easy to boot into windows, but it becomes a huge hassle to shut everything down and swith the computer to the other OS. IMHO, the best way to use Linux & Windows is with completely seperate machines. I keep mine on a KVM switch. 3 keystrokes and I can be back and forth between Linux and Windows instantly. It really does work well and allows you to use Linux to your heart's content and the minute you need to do something that's Windows only, you can go do it.

It also frees up one machine for doing other work. There have been times when I as using both Linux and Windows to encode video just to get it done faster (AviDemux on Linux and VirtualDub on Windows).

 

[thehstrybean]

If you decide not to dual-boot, I would suggest VMware Workstation 5.5...You would have to get 5.5 because it is the only version that supports 64-bit virtual machines...I'm using it, and I don't have to go through NDIS Wrapper to get all my wifi goin and such..Very nice software...

 

[DasFox]

OmniShinzui use either Ubuntu or SuSe. Oh and did you know the MAN himself Mr Linux ---> Linus Torvalds uses SuSe. 🙂

Me I'm a SLACKER as my SIG says, WoOT.

GL 😉

 

[Nothinman]

Oh and did you know the MAN himself Mr Linux ---> Linus Torvalds uses SuSe.

I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that he uses a dual G5 so are you advocating everyone goes out and buys one of those too?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Suse is a great operating system, but it'd be perfect if it was debian based and had it's own repository.

 

[corinthos]

I made the complete switch from XP to Linux fairly recently and am happy I did... I <3 Linux!

Anyway, you might look into Ubuntu (Debian based), it is pretty easy to setup and is ready to go with Gnome desktop after install. There may or may not be a 64-bit release, I'm not sure.

 

[xtknight]

OpenSUSE 10 64-bit.

 

[thehstrybean]

I got Fedora Core 4 x86_64 on my L2000 using VMware today, and I must say that it > *. I'm probably the only one here that does, but I love the .rpm base. Quick & easy for installing.