linux dual boot

[mwmorph]

can anyone give me instructions to make a dual boot linux box and recommend a free linux build a windows user can operate easily? do i need to partion my drive to do a dual boot? are there any good partion software?
thanks!

 

[Dragonbate]

If I remember correctly Mandrake offers to resize your windows partition for installation. Its also pretty windows user friendly. Still, I'd reccomend you try knoppix for awhile before you install anything. You can also have Knoppix save settings on your hd without an hd install. Its also one of my favorite distros.

 

[mwmorph]

thanks

 

[KoolDrew]

As I said before I reccomend Ubuntu. IO tried Mandrake and really thought t was terrible. The installation is pretty straight forward. Also running Knoppix off of a CD may not be a bad idea. You can download Knoppix and put it on a Cd and boot it of the CD. This way you can try out a Linux distro without installing it and risking messing anything up. You could also use Gnoppix which uses Gnome instead of KDE.

 

[mwmorph]

whats the difference between kde and gnome?

 

[KoolDrew]

They are different GUI's that run under linux. You may like KDE better, but I myself like Gnome.

 

[Davegod75]

ubuntu works great!

 

[OffTopic1]

Fedora/Mandrake/SuSE (Redhat base) all offer disk resizing (Fat/Fat32/NTFS/etc...) tool. Mepis/Ubuntu (Debian base) offer Qparted to resize your disk as well.

The above distros are mentioned becasue they are relatively easy to intall and have load of bundled softwwares that came on the disk. SuSE can be download @ 3.1GB DVD, that included over 1000 application on it and more can befound on Novell site or 3rd party sites.

Download the user or admin guide of the distro that you want to try out & read the instruction on dual boot. Or, backup an image of your hdd, then reboot with one of the above linux distro and follow the wizzard to intall a dualboot system.

 

[TheLonelyPhoenix]

I've heard the auto-resizing of your Windows partition can get pretty hairy. Has anyone successfully gotten that to work?

 

[bersl2]

It is my understanding that resizing (shrinking) a filesystem is always a risky proposition.

 

[OffTopic1]

Resizing your hdd isn't that scarry as long as you defrag and make sure that all of your data on the front of your hdd. I use manually do it back in the DOS day, and defrag my 20~400 megs hdds then del the single primary partition & created new partitions then run chkdsk/scandisk to recover the data after formated for the new partition. The tricks of yesterday are now employ more elegantly theirfore it is perfectly safe to resize your partition as long as you defrag your hdd prior to resize.