Dual booting

[itxweather]

Hi,

Can anyone please advise the most hassle free way of dual booting a WinXP PC?.
Haven't any experience on Dual Booting so please excuse my ignorance. I'd like to try out a Linux distro or two but don't particularly want to reformat hard disk drive and install one operating system only.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice!.
Best Regards.

 

[spyordie007]

what do you want to dual boot xp with?

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
what do you want to dual boot xp with?

Hi,

I'd like to dual boot xp with something like Mandrake, Ubuntu Linux or something similar (preferably a Linux distro that's geared towards a newbie to Linux).

Thank you.

 

[spyordie007]

Than you'll want to install windows first and ensure that there is enough free space on the drive to create new partitions during the linux install. Most linux distros (including mandrake) will setup the bootloader (that's the menu that lets you pick which OS you want to boot into) during the install.

good luck

-Erik

 

[spyordie007]

in looking at your OP I realized that you mentioned linux there; my mistake for missing it

 

[Umberger]

i agree, DEFINITELY install windows first, with free space for another partition and then install linux. Every distribution I have ever used has had its own provision for a bootloader installation and setup. Some of them even have partitioning utilities that allow you do manage everything even with Windows taking up the whole drive when you start. I might reccommend making a disc image before you start, just in case something goes awry and you have to start over. (It happened to me my first few times).

Also, I'm not sure what kind of linux use you're looking for, but there are a few very nice, bootable distributions that you can boot from their CD and run without installing at all. Those are fun if you're looking to just fiddle around with linux a bit... I know you didn't ask, but I just thought I'd throw that in there.

 

[Enfer Singe]

Some linux distros allow you to partition during the installation (such as mandrake), but if you want to partition in windows, get something like partition magic. They have an option in there for installing a new operating system, but I have never tried it out, I always just did a normal install when using linux.

If you want a very easy way to try out linux, you can do what Umberger suggested and use a bootable cd. Most people use Knoppix, but Mandrake (now "Mandriva") makes one called Mandrake Move. If you want the full experience though I would suggest a full install.

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
in looking at your OP I realized that you mentioned linux there; my mistake for missing it

Hi,

No problem. . Thank you for your suggestions anyway. Thought that I might have to use some form of 3rd party partitioning software. Am confident that there's enough space for a bootloader to install a Linux distro. Am I right in thinking that a bootloader will identify WinXP on an existing partition on the hard disk drive and not automatically delete it?. Excuse my ignorance but i'm not experienced in dual booting :-(.
Thank you for your help, it is appreciated.

 

[Umberger]

yes. it will see that windows is installed. as i remember it asks what you want to do as far as bootloader setup is concerned. most of the time, there is a very nice menu that walks your through it. it is not difficult. good luck!

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: Enfer Singe
Some linux distros allow you to partition during the installation (such as mandrake), but if you want to partition in windows, get something like partition magic. They have an option in there for installing a new operating system, but I have never tried it out, I always just did a normal install when using linux.

If you want a very easy way to try out linux, you can do what Umberger suggested and use a bootable cd. Most people use Knoppix, but Mandrake (now "Mandriva") makes one called Mandrake Move. If you want the full experience though I would suggest a full install.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I'd thought that I might have to buy Partition Magic or something similar but am glad to hear that this is not absolutely necessary (if i've read the responses to this topic correctly). I think that bootable Linux distros that don't write to the hard disk drive are a good idea for trying out Linux. Am I right in saying that Mandrake is particularly useful for recovering files from an unbootable WinXP partition (or am I barking up the wrong tree?).

Any suggestions as to what Linux distro's to give a try?. Have downloaded Ubuntu Linux
but not tried installing it as I was unsure how to go about dual booting.

Thank you for your help, it is appreciated.

 

[duragezic]

Correct. For example during the Ubuntu install it has always detected my XP installation fine and setup the bootloader accordingly.

If you don't have enough free space on the hard drive, then yeah you will need 3rd party software. XP can't resize partitions without deleting and creating new ones. You don't have any old hard drives lying around? A 5-10gb should be plenty. Then you can have the linux setup wipe out that drive and not have to worry about your XP install.

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: duragezic
Correct. For example during the Ubuntu install it has always detected my XP installation fine and setup the bootloader accordingly.

If you don't have enough free space on the hard drive, then yeah you will need 3rd party software. XP can't resize partitions without deleting and creating new ones. You don't have any old hard drives lying around? A 5-10gb should be plenty. Then you can have the linux setup wipe out that drive and not have to worry about your XP install.

Hi, Thank you. Was hoping to dual boot on a WinXP notebook PC so no second hard disk drive unfortunately :-(. Guess that I could give something like Ubuntu a try on my desktop PC though as there's two hard disk drives installed, the second one has no operating system on it. Can you forsee any problems with installing a Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Mandrake on a notebook PC. Think i've got RedHat9 somewhere as well, i'd like to give that a try or should I try Ubuntu or Mandrake before trying out RedHat9?. By the way is RedHat no longer downloadable as I cannot seem to find it anywhere (perhaps i'm not looking in the right place?).

Have a good weekend.

Best Regards.

 

[duragezic]

I would probably try Ubuntu "Hoary" 5.04. It is new and should work fine on your laptop. I wouldn't really bother with Redhat, Fedora is the new Redhat distro. And I guess Mandrake is good for noobs, but I'm a linux noob and I found Ubuntu to be the clear winner.

 

[CheapBastardo]

My experience with dual booting between XP and linux has been horrible. I couldn't get the two operating systems to hang with each other. The linux always messed up my MBR. When I rewrite the MBR that just wipe out linux record on the mbr. Now, I boot linux with a floppy disk.

 

[corkyg]

And now for a completely different approach, The best way I know is to have separate discreet hard drives for each OS. Then to make this easy - get a mobile rack and a couple of inner trays. To boot differently, just change trays. That way there is never any interference or interaction between OS's and programs.

 

[Enfer Singe]

itxweather, I ordered ubuntu disks before it came out, but never got them...good thing it was free, but as for that, I haven't used or installed it, so I can't give you any advice on that. Anyway, mandrake was my introduction to linux and I found it to be very good, as long as you have the latest version. The graphical installation is extremely easy, and impossible to screw up. You should, however, google "urpmi" and learn about it because it is one of the easiest ways to get things done in mandrake. If you go to Easy Urpmi (or one of their mirrors), they make it very easy to add those sources to your media index, which you will learn about if you do that google search.

 

[tomt4535]

i remeber that suse 9.1 found my windows installation, and defaulted to a dual boot scenario. it did it all atuomaticly, when in redhat or fedora, i had to configure it manually. it was real simple to dual boot for me.

 

[qbek]

Originally posted by: itxweather

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I'd thought that I might have to buy Partition Magic or something similar but am glad to hear that this is not absolutely necessary (if i've read the responses to this topic correctly). I think that bootable Linux distros that don't write to the hard disk drive are a good idea for trying out Linux. Am I right in saying that Mandrake is particularly useful for recovering files from an unbootable WinXP partition (or am I barking up the wrong tree?).

You are right. I would suggest you try out Knoppix (or any other LiveCD Linux) first. It's also a great recovery tool for windows systems. I.e QtParted is in many respects equivalent to Partition Magic. Finally a LiveCD like Knoppix allows you to try linux without messing with your hard drives. If you like it, then you can always go with dualboot at a later time.

Many other distributions offer live CDs, too. Good luck!

 

[LBmtb]

I use Fedora Core 3 and really like it. (I'm on it right now) and it configured Grub (bootloader) when I installed Fedora. Easy process.

If I were you I'd go with Fedora, SuSu, or Mandrake. Take a look at linuxforums.org also, lots of good info and friendly people

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: LBmtb
I use Fedora Core 3 and really like it. (I'm on it right now) and it configured Grub (bootloader) when I installed Fedora. Easy process.

Agreed. I also like Fedora. (Although I'm using 2... I'm too lazy to upgrade something that works). Everything was very easy however. :thumbsup:

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: Enfer Singe
itxweather, I ordered ubuntu disks before it came out, but never got them...good thing it was free, but as for that, I haven't used or installed it, so I can't give you any advice on that. Anyway, mandrake was my introduction to linux and I found it to be very good, as long as you have the latest version. The graphical installation is extremely easy, and impossible to screw up. You should, however, google "urpmi" and learn about it because it is one of the easiest ways to get things done in mandrake. If you go to Easy Urpmi (or one of their mirrors), they make it very easy to add those sources to your media index, which you will learn about if you do that google search.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I'd ordered Ubuntu disks online as well probably about 3,4 or 5 weeks ago but nothing has come through the post :-(. Perhaps international delivery takes more than 6-weeks. Thank you for the recommendation regarding doing a google on "urpmi". Am wanting to download Mandrake Linux but am finding their web-site quite confusing :-(. Any idea's where exactly iso's can be downloaded from (free of charge)?.

Thank you.
Best Regards.

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: Enfer Singe
itxweather, I ordered ubuntu disks before it came out, but never got them...good thing it was free, but as for that, I haven't used or installed it, so I can't give you any advice on that. Anyway, mandrake was my introduction to linux and I found it to be very good, as long as you have the latest version. The graphical installation is extremely easy, and impossible to screw up. You should, however, google "urpmi" and learn about it because it is one of the easiest ways to get things done in mandrake. If you go to Easy Urpmi (or one of their mirrors), they make it very easy to add those sources to your media index, which you will learn about if you do that google search.

Hello again,

Apologies, forgot to ask, what exactly is Easy Urpmi, is it used for unpacking or installing rpm's (not that I know what they are right now anyway but am keen to learn!).

Thank you.
Best Regards.

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: corkyg
And now for a completely different approach, The best way I know is to have separate discreet hard drives for each OS. Then to make this easy - get a mobile rack and a couple of inner trays. To boot differently, just change trays. That way there is never any interference or interaction between OS's and programs.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. Think that this is certainly a good approach for a desktop Linux distro installation.

Best Regards.

 

[Enfer Singe]

Originally posted by: itxweather
Hello again,

Apologies, forgot to ask, what exactly is Easy Urpmi, is it used for unpacking or installing rpm's (not that I know what they are right now anyway but am keen to learn!).

Thank you.
Best Regards.

In mandrake, there is a system called "urpmi". Basically when you want to install pretty much any program, in the console, while logged in as root (type su, which stands for switch user, to login as root), you would type, urpmi package name. For example, if I wanted to install firefox, I would type in: "urpmi mozilla-firefox" (without the quotes). That is basically cliff notes of its use, there is much more to it though. For example, uninstalling a program is made very easy, as all you have to do is type "urpme mozilla-firefox".

Now that you hopefully have a slight understanding of how to use it, here is a basic summary of how it works. When you type in urpmi whatever, it looks through all its media sources to find the packages you are looking for (the only sources that are pre-installed are the cd's that you used to install mandrake.) Basically what Easy Urpmi does is add web sources to your list. This way, when you urpmi something you can search for it on the web and have a much larger database of rpm's and wont have to put your cd's in everytime you want to install something. This also ensures that the software you install is up to date. You can also alltogether remove the cd's ass media so it automatically searches the web.

Phew, hope you got all that . If not just ask, or pm me so I don't have to get rediculously off the thread's topic. BTW, as I said in an earlier post, I ordered my ubuntu disks before it was even released nad have pretty much given up hope on recieving them. Let me know if you ever get yours. Oh and also an rpm is comprable to a windows .exe, and a .tar file (such as .tar.gz) is the linux version of a .zip.

I hope this all helped, and after all this, you better go with Mandrake! Just kidding, but if you do a google image search, there are screenshots of pretty much every linux install, and ubuntu has an illustrated guide on their website, so you can use those to help you decide which you would be most comfortable installing.

 

[itxweather]

Originally posted by: Enfer Singe

Originally posted by: itxweather
Hello again,

Apologies, forgot to ask, what exactly is Easy Urpmi, is it used for unpacking or installing rpm's (not that I know what they are right now anyway but am keen to learn!).

Thank you.
Best Regards.

In mandrake, there is a system called "urpmi". Basically when you want to install pretty much any program, in the console, while logged in as root (type su, which stands for switch user, to login as root), you would type, urpmi package name. For example, if I wanted to install firefox, I would type in: "urpmi mozilla-firefox" (without the quotes). That is basically cliff notes of its use, there is much more to it though. For example, uninstalling a program is made very easy, as all you have to do is type "urpme mozilla-firefox".

Now that you hopefully have a slight understanding of how to use it, here is a basic summary of how it works. When you type in urpmi whatever, it looks through all its media sources to find the packages you are looking for (the only sources that are pre-installed are the cd's that you used to install mandrake.) Basically what Easy Urpmi does is add web sources to your list. This way, when you urpmi something you can search for it on the web and have a much larger database of rpm's and wont have to put your cd's in everytime you want to install something. This also ensures that the software you install is up to date. You can also alltogether remove the cd's ass media so it automatically searches the web.

Phew, hope you got all that . If not just ask, or pm me so I don't have to get rediculously off the thread's topic. BTW, as I said in an earlier post, I ordered my ubuntu disks before it was even released nad have pretty much given up hope on recieving them. Let me know if you ever get yours. Oh and also an rpm is comprable to a windows .exe, and a .tar file (such as .tar.gz) is the linux version of a .zip.

I hope this all helped, and after all this, you better go with Mandrake! Just kidding, but if you do a google image search, there are screenshots of pretty much every linux install, and ubuntu has an illustrated guide on their website, so you can use those to help you decide which you would be most comfortable installing.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply and for explaining what exactly Urpmi does, that's most useful as i'd not heard of Urpmi before now and to be completely honest wasn't 100% sure what rpm's, .tar's etc.. were as i've not really got a lot experience with Linux. Like the idea that Urpmi does a web search for rpm's. Just out of interest let's say for arguments sake with other Linux distros how do you go about installing and uninstalling a program (think that Urpmi works with Mandrake only)?.

Thank you.
Best Regards.

P.S. By all means if the Ubuntu cd's come through the post i'll let you know by PM.