easiest Linux for dual boot?

[Friendly]

I forgot to ask what is the best? easiest Linux O/S to make dual boot with win 2000 and xp?
thanks

 

[drag]

The easiest way to dual boot is to use 2 harddrives.

Put one HD as the primary master IDE device. The second drive as the secondary master device.

Install windows on the first drive, then turn it off and disconnect the first drive then go ahead and install Linux.

Then reconnect the first drive.

Then use your BIOS to switch between the boot devices. After you get good at linux then setup the bootloader to dual boot with windows. And once that works just keep using the Linux bootloader stuff to switch between the OSes.

That way you minimize the chance that you could screw both OSes at the same time. And ultimately if you want to use only windows, you can format the second HD and use that for extra storrage. Windows should boot up just fine since it's NTLOADER booloader is left unmolested.

Other then that dual booting from a single HD isn't much harder.

To newbies I recommend Redhat, Fedora, SuSE or Mandrake.

 

[xSauronx]

i know for a fact that mandrake 9.1 made it damn easy to setup dual booting on one drive. never gave me a problem. it set up lilo, partitioning and what not very simply

would prefer a different drive though, but i know mandrake can make it painless if you dont have one

 

[Flatline]

Mandrake, SUSE, etc. make it very easy to do. I agree that separate drives are always nice, but I don't think the BIOS jockeying is really necessary since you can still use lilo to boot your windows install even if you wipe out your *nix install. Besides, it's really easy to get the windows bootloader back to its original state - boot from the cd, go to the console, and you're two commands away.

 

[burnedout]

Redhat is also easily configured for dual boot rigs. Two of my boxes are dual boot Redhat/Win2K. I also had a tri-boot (Mandrake, Win2K, Win98) until reformatting the HDD and then installing the drive into another machine.

 

[KB]

Fedora Core AKA Red Hat 10, will setup your dual boot configuration automatically during the install. It will then install a bootloader which will let you pick which OS you want to boot. Ver easy.

 

[Netopia]

If you're just getting into Linux and want to load it without killing your main OS, you might consider Knoppix or SUSE Live Eval. Both of these are CD based distros, meaning that you don't actually install them at all... they boot right off of the CD. One of them (I can't remember which) will write a 100MB file to your hard drive and let you keep any files and/or linux config files there.

To get either of these or several other distros, LinuxISO. Org is a good place to go.

Joe

 

[SUOrangeman]

KNOPPIX and MandrakeMove are probably even better CD-only distributions. With KNOPPIX, you can later install it to the hard drive after you've gotten used to how things operate.

-SUO

 

[Netopia]

Cool SUO!

I didn't know that Knoppix was ever meant as anything more than a CD Distro! I also didn't realize that Mandrake (one of the "prettiest" desktops IMHO) made a CD based distro. Do tell more if you've more to tell!

Joe

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Netopia
Cool SUO!

I didn't know that Knoppix was ever meant as anything more than a CD Distro! I also didn't realize that Mandrake (one of the "prettiest" desktops IMHO) made a CD based distro. Do tell more if you've more to tell!

Joe

that "prettiness" isn't distro specific... You can configure any linux distro to look like any other, or to be completely unique

 

[Netopia]

that "prettiness" isn't distro specific... You can configure any linux distro to look like any other, or to be completely unique

While mostly true, I don't know that it is totally true. I've tried in the past to do some things on RedHat and been very frustrated at failure... only to learn that RedHat has "crippled" some things having to do with the GUI in order to better support their own desire for the BlueCurve desktop initiative.

On the "mostly true" front though... you're absolutly right. I guess I should have made a more definitive statement like "one of the prettiest default desktops" or "one of the prettiest predefined desktops".

Thanks for the correction.

Joe

 

[JustMike]

only to learn that RedHat has "crippled" some things having to do with the GUI in order to better support their own desire for the BlueCurve desktop initiative.

I do not believe that is true... can you cite specific examples?

 

[SUOrangeman]

KNOPPIX has two methods of installing the distro to the hard drive. I believe the two scripts are knx-hdinstall and knoppix-installer. In any case, there is a fairly active user community. All questions have been/are being/will be answered by someone there: http://www.knoppix.net/

MandrakeMove just recent came onto the scene (say, two months or less): http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/mandrakemove/

-SUO

 

[Netopia]

I do not believe that is true... can you cite specific examples?

It's been about a year... but I'll see if I can dig up what it was that I was trying to do.

Joe

 

[Netopia]

SUO... thanks for the info.

JustMike, I'm coming up short trying to look through the criptic notes I've got. It seems to me I was trying to load the newest KDE and Gnome (this was on RH8) and put in some new themes and it simply WOULDN'T work no matter what I did. It was after LOTS of scouring the web that I ran into some post from some other people who said that because of some configuration changes that RH had made for BlueCurve, the user flexibility was no longer there for some things.

Again, this was RH8 and it may have changed totally in RH9.

Sorry I can't come up with a more definitive answer... at the time I was more just frustrated than interested in documenting for posterity!

Joe

 

[Flatline]

I remember that the KDE team was more than a bit miffed at the time. One of RedHat's KDE developers even went so far as to leave the company over the changes. I haven't used RedHat in a while, so I'm not sure if the issue remains.

 

[Netopia]

Flatline, Thank You! I was beginning to think I was losing my mind since I couldn't find ANYTHING relating to my problems. I appreciate the help.... and feel a little vindicated too!

Joe

 

[JustMike]

I stand corrected. I actually remember seeing that brief exchange between RH and KDE, but didn't pay too much attention. I am just simply tired of the flak that RH takes. If it wasn't for them, Linux would be different than it is today. Nobody can stand to see others making money where they are not.

 

[Netopia]

JustMike,

I hear you. I'm the same way about MS bashers. If MS hadn't been around to help get everything more standardized, most of the world would still be going through the battles that Linux is going through and will have to go through in the future to try to get some basic standards everyone can argee too.... that or we'd all be paying $5000 for 500 MHz Apple Computers.

As far as Linux... I like to try many different flavors, but the two machines I've got as dedicated servers both run RH9 because even though RH might not be as totally configurable or as "open" as some people would like, the fact is that it's well known and has a large user/support base in addition to being as stable as the rest. I don't care if they make boatloads of money, so long as we get a good OS out of it!

Joe