Red Hat/Win2K Pro dual boot?

[AMDPwred]

Can I dual boot these two operating systems? I'd really like to start learning Linux but don't want to completly jump over. So I'm guessing with Linux I would have to find a new word processing program and basicly all new software for Linux, right? I'll probably go out and buy Red Hat from Circuit City or something (for the support and manuals). Oh and I'd really just be programming, school work, and web surfing on Linux. No games or anything like that. So what would you guys recommend?

 

[crohozen]

Yes, you can dual boot them. I am not sure on how to use the ntbootloader to do it.

But,

You can use LILO to do it. You have to put a 50mb /boot partition on the first part of your master hard drive and then you just edit /etc/lilo.conf and run /sbin/lilo

Its pretty simple.

 

[n0cmonkey]

linuxdoc.org, linuxnewbie.org, search the forums here.

 

[akiraxtc]

Or... you can just use Redhat 7's partitionless install which will sit on top of your FAT32 filesystem. Once you get a hang of it you can jump over right away.
I did that before i think... i installed win2k first, then redhat 7...lilo will take care of the boot selection.

 

[AMDPwred]

What if I'm using the NTFS (I think that's what it is)?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< What if I'm using the NTFS (I think that's what it is)? >>



The install inside your windows FAT32 file system install option wont work.

 

[blahblah99]

to make your linux/win2k dual boot, you need to make two partitions first... then install W2k FIRST on your main partition.

After installing win2k, pop in the redhat cd and boot up from cdrom (or floppy with the redhat image bootup) and install linux on the second partition, but here's the trick.

You need to specify a boot partition on your second partition so you can install the boot information on there. When it asks if you want to install it on the MASTER BOOT RECORD, SELECT NO and INSTALL IT ON YOUR BOOT PARTITION. Make a linux boot disk when it asks you for one. It will then do the install and when its done and you reboot, you should still be booting up into Win2k (if you booted up into linux, then you need to reformat and start over). Reboot into linux using that boot diskette, dump out the first kilobyte of the boot sector info into the disk, reboot into w2k, copy that bootsector info into c:\, and edit your boot.ini to read that and you should be able to select.

if you want more detailed information, just search on google for "dual boot linux win 2000". There's plenty of how to's on there

hopes this helps!