Re: Looking for dual booting advice
- From: "Chirag Shukla" <chiragshuklaindia@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 Jul 2006 16:52:56 -0700
PaulFXH wrote:
Hi
I'm going to dual boot WinXP and Linux (?) from a single HD.
Linux(?): For your use, I'd go with Ubuntu (https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
get free CD or else download it from http://www.ubuntu.com/download).
Although I've researched this quite thoroughly, I'm surprised that
there is no simple step-by-step instruction available.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6104490811311898236. This
video shows XP Professional installation as well. If your HDD doesnt
have any free space for Linux, just use gparted livecd or norton's
partition magic to create some free space for Linux. For your purpose,
10-15GB of free space should be good enough unless you decide to
download/create huge amount of data, or install huge packages outside
of Ubuntu CD.
In addition,
there seems to be two distinct schools of thought as to whether Linux
should be installed BEFORE or AFTER Windows.
In any event, my intention is to install Linux after WinXP (which is
already there).
I prefer installing Windows first and then Linux.
If you go other way round, Windows (installed 2nd) will wipe out the
nice bootloader that Linux (installed 1st) installed. You will have to
go through an additional step of re-installing the bootloader.
I would appreciate if somebody can direct me to a link which might
clarify some of the issues involved in this. I would particularly like
to understand a little more about the whole boot loader/MBR thing.
http://www.redhat.com/support/resources/faqs/rhl_general_faq/s1-bootloader.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/os.html#OSBOOT
See if you can get some answers from these links
For
example, it seems to be stressed in many of the articles I read to
avoid the Linux boot loader installing into the MBR. OK, but how?
If you know what you are doing, installing to the MBR is okay too. MBR
can be backed up:
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2005/10/20/backing-up-the-mbr/.
When you install Fedora Core Linux, it will ask you where you want to
install the bootloader - on the MBR or otherwise.
Although I have tried a few of the Linux LiveCDs, I'm still unclear as
to which Linux flavor to install on the HD.
Every distribution has its own pros and cons. It is very difficult to
find which one works the best for you other than installing and trying
them. For home users, I recommend Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) and PCLinuxOS
0.92. I have heard some good reviews about Mandriva, SuSE, Mepis and
Fedora. http://distrowatch.com/ site shows how different distributions
are doing, gives reviews and a few more reads.
My needs are very simple (OOo, Media Player and Internet are the only
essentials) and I would appreciate advice as to which is likely to suit
my situation as outlined above.
Install Firefox, OpenOffice and VLC media player on any distribution
and you should be good to go. Ubuntu ships with FireFox and OpenOffice.
Get VLC using
http://www.ubuntux.org/how-to-install-the-videolanclient-vlc-media-player
website (and many others direct you how to get VLC).
I am expecting the top 10 distributions on distrowatch to recognize all
your hardware just fine.
TIA
Paul
Dell 4550 Desktop
WinXP Home SP2
CPU P4, 2.53 GHz
1.0 GB RAM
Int HD 80 GB ntfs, non-partitioned
Ext HD 160 GB ntfs, 3 partitions
Ext HD 250 GB ntfs, 4 partitions
My home Dell Dimension 3000's hardware is detected fine by Knoppix,
FC4, PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu. At work, I have mixed bag of successes but I
dont care a lot at work if sound card isnt recognized since we dont
need sound to get our things done anyway.
I replaced my FC4 with Ubuntu at home only for the reason that Ubuntu
detected my wireless PCI out-of-the box and connected fine to the
access points whereas ndiswrapper and 16k stack from Linuxant for FC4
were a headache at times, and again success was not consistent with
ndiswrapper+FC4+16k stack kernels+wireless PCI.
Now, if you want to watch CNN videos, listen to smashits.com, raaga.com
etc., Linuxes might cause a bit of trouble. Again, there are pros/cons
with all OSes. Overall, Linux is an excellent OS. Hope you have fun
working on it. Good luck.
.
- References:
- Looking for dual booting advice
- From: PaulFXH
- Looking for dual booting advice
- Prev by Date: Re: Looking for dual booting advice
- Next by Date: Re: Using VNC Viewer
- Previous by thread: Re: Looking for dual booting advice
- Next by thread: Re: Looking for dual booting advice
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
