Links to dual boot XP & Linux wanted

[KSmith]

I have a PC running XP.
I'd like to try out Linux and would like to set the box up to dual-boot.
I'm thinking of using Novell/SUSE Linux. They have a free version available.

Where do I learn about setting up my system for dual booting? I would appreciate any web links.

Thanks.

 

[eklass]

It's acutally unbelievably easy. The biggest issue is to ensure you have a seperate partition on your hard drive or a whole seperate hard drive altogether. This is where you want to install linux.

One that is set up, simply boot off the CD and you should just follow the steps to set things up. The hardst part you will run into is setting up the partions within linux. You will need at the very least 2, 1 for the data and 1 for a swap area. make sure you have the swap as roughly 1.5 times the amount of ram you have. Before I get flamed, let me say there are tons fo theories on how you should partition the data part of your install (such as setting up /home as a seperate mountpoint), but it's an advanced topic for someone just starting out with linux.

the next issue you'll run into is where to install the boot loader. probably, your best option it to find an available floppy and install the bootloader there. as long as this floppy is in the floppy drive when you start your computer, it should start up linux. no floppy, no linux. other options include MBR (master boot record). this is also easy, but it makes it much harder to get rid of linux if you want. if you every get rid of linux, you will have no way of getting to windows (you would have to reinstall the windows bootloader or use a 3rd party one). there's a couple other options, but that's what i recommend

beyond that, itshould be very simply to get things installed.

as far as a distro, i highly recommend ubuntu. it's debian-based, and apt rocks for installing new packages (especially hen combined with synaptic package manager). www.ubuntulinux.org
i use it on my laptop and it works like a dream. the next verion (hoary hedgehog) is going to be final come april. you could install it now and just do a `sudo apt-get upgrade` to get any of the latest packages. alternatively, you could install warty warthog and after changing your repositories from warty to hoary, just do a `sudo apt-get dist-upgrade`

p.s. it makes life a lot easier if you have another computer attached to the internet to use as a reference in case you're unsure about anything

 

[moonsite]

Yeah with SuSe it is very easy. In fact, it will create the partition for you from the existing free disk space. I have a computer with win2k on it with one partition. When I first installed SuSE, I was thinking that it would delete my win2k partition, but instead it just create the linux partitions from the existing free disk space. As for the dual boot, it will just do it automatically too. Ofcourse like eklass mention, it is best to put on floppy. But again, if you decide to uninstall it later, you can always do a repair on your winxp/win2k to get your windows working again.

 

[Zelmo3]

I have to disagree with the bootloader comments.It used to be practical to write Linux's boot loader to a floppy, but for at least the last few years most installers will automatically configure their boot loader to give you a menu with every installed system when you boot, and you just arrow up or down to pick the one you want to load. I know SuSE does that by default, and has for some time.
Getting rid of Linux is still as easy as ever. You just delete the partition and use the Windows CD's fixmbr command to put its own boot loader back on.

I'm also going to recommend ubuntu. If that gets too tricky, then try SuSE--that should be very friendly, but a little more limited as far as easy software options.

 

[KSmith]

First of all, thanks to all of you9 for your info-rmed advice.
I still have some questions, though:

o Why ubunto? Everyone had kind words to say about SUSE. I hadn't even heard of unbunto before joining these forums. What is its claim to fame?
What I am looking for is a distro with:

- good driver support:
ECS 755-A2 MB with Realtek sound amd LAN chips.
NEC 3520 DVD+- burner
Athlon 64 CPU

- Easy user interface Non-technical members of the household have to like this system, too.
Open office and Netscape are musts. Things likoe file managers are important, too.

o I don't have a floppy for booting. Can I boot off CD instead?

 

[Zelmo3]

Any distro will give you pretty much the same drivers because they're mostly part of the kernel. Most can be booted from CD, too. And most will also include common unix-type software like OpenOffice, though Netscape is now usually dropped in favor of Mozilla.

SuSE has the advantage of being more user-friendly, especially when it comes to setting hardware up and changing configs. The drawback with SuSE is that each release will only update the kernel to a certain point; after that, to get a newer kernel you have to install a newer release (or download and install a kernel manually, which I have never gotten to work well with SuSE). Software installation is also pretty good with SuSE, being an RPM-based distro that will actually check for dependencies and ask how you want to resolve them. But it can't always get the dependencies you might need, so you still end up having to fish around for them yourself seomtimes.

Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu resolve dependencies by default, and it's very rare that they run into a dependency they can't resolve. They also have no limitations on how far you can upgrade any software, including the kernel, so once you install the distro there's never a need to re-install or install a newer version unless you change hardware architectures (i.e., going from x86-32 to x86-64 you might want to reinstall to take full advantage of the 64-bit extensions). The user-friendliness of Debian has gotten pretty good with recent releases, and Ubuntu is said to be even better. Debian has a huge software base to draw from, and Ubuntu draws from all of Debian's base plus its own repository. Ubuntu also tends to not wait as long as Debian to declare a piece of sofware "ready," so they stay more up-to-date. That's also an area where SuSE lags behind considerably.

It really all comes down to administration. Everyday end-users will not see any difference between distros, so what you choose will not matter to the non-techies in the house. SuSE will probably be easier to start out with, but Im' guessing after you get used to Linux administration you might want to change over to something more flexible.