• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

I WANT TO TRY LINUX!!

R

Rip the Jacker

Diamond Member
I have Windows XP. I have lots of hard drive space. I need specific directions on how to install LINUX but NOT fvck up my Windows XP partition.

How can I do this?

Oh by the way, the reason for this is because I think it's necessary to get familiar with the (UNIX?) environment.. so I can be fluent with Bash, know my way around Linux/UNIX, know the ins/outs of servers (most are Linux), SSH, and all that crap.
 
Some Linux distros like Ubuntu have graphical install wizards that let you manually partition for linux. I installed Ubuntu after I installed Windows XP on my laptop and I have it working fine. Two Windows partitions + Linux root partition + Linux swap partition - works fine.
 
The latest Ubuntu installer is also a LiveCD so you can play with it without touching your hard drives. Once you figure out if you really want to install it you should be able to resize the partitions and install it from within the LiveCD, but I'd still backup your Windows installation first just in case.
 
I dont know how common this is with others but when I try to install linux on the same drive as windows, I would get HAL.dll errors out of the blue and at random and both os's would corrupt each others boot loader with me having to go sometimes multiple times a day and fix the boot loaders. Both of them. The very last time it happened I lost all my data because the boot loader could not be repaired by using the same repair method all the other times.
How strange is that!!
I would at least try it on a different physical drive, and this post isnt meant to be discouraging.
 
Buy a second hard drive. Replace the windows hard drive while experimenting. It's by far the easiest way to be fairly sure you won't destroy anything. If it gets to be a pain switching drives if you're going back and forth often, well, I usually just buy a new machine at that point 😛

But yeah, live cd first.
 
well Suse Linux open project used to have a "Live" image you could download & run entirely from CD-ROM, without installing anything. Complete with two desktop alternatives, other stuff, all run complete, seamless, with no installation.

So that's the easy way to "try Linux."

A few months ago I got Suse Linux 10.1 Live CD-ROM, from www.opensuse.org/

Some of the other distributions may also have a "Live" disk download available, I haven't checked.

EDIT:
Here it is for you:

A live-DVD of SUSE Linux 10.1 is now available

"The SUSE Linux 10.1 Live DVD is available now from:
http://download.opensuse.org/distributi...dvd-iso/SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-LiveDVD.iso

The Live DVD is a 32bit intel based system which contains 4GB of great Linux software compressed into a 1.7GB iso. "

For me the only issue was in finding the right display drivers for Linux, still works without them but display was "clunky". So I hope the display driver thing goes smoothly for you.

Getting ready for the big switch to Linux instead of Windows Vista, like me too, eh? But where will that leave us when it comes to DirectX 10 video? Good luck.
 
I would opt for a clean drive and switch boot options in the BIOS to use either one. This will alow you to really delve into it without fear of hosing anything else.
 
Dualbooting sucks, it won't take long for you to get tired of the rebooting and just stick with one OS. Grab a copy of VMWare and play with that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top