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Question on Linux and Dual Booting....

post #1 of 4
11/7/05 at 5:04pm
Thread Starter 
I have been doing research on Linux and what type I want to run. I wanted to say that this will be a new venture, as I have no prior experience with it. I was looking at Red Hat, Novell, and Mandrake Linux. Which do you run, or recommend and why?? I just want to be able to have an open mind when making my decision, and make sure I didnt overlook anything.

I also will be dual booting. I have Microsoft XP Media Center SP2. I know i need to partition the drive with a VFAT partition to hold the Linux /boot records. How do I do that, as I have a ton of crap on my HDD already, and want to make a small partition. Also I need to know how to make the system recognize i have 2 OS's to choose from.....

Any info or suggestions is appreciated

PS: I know this is the AW forum, but I figured you guys use this as much as anyone, so thanks for letting me intrude
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post #2 of 4
11/7/05 at 5:39pm
I have used RedHat, SUSE, and Slackware. I prefer RedHat for servers, but I really like SUSE. As long as you have some unallocated space, you won't have any problems installing it. SUSE will detect XP and add it to its boot loader during the install process.
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post #3 of 4
11/7/05 at 5:54pm
yeah, you'd probably get better feedback in the linux forums. first thing you gotta do is defrag your hard drive. the windows defragger is alright, but there are better 3rd party defraggers out there. that will push everything to the front of the hard drive so that you can shrink the windows partition and make a linux partition. you can use partition magic to shrink the windows partition, but dont create the linux partition yet. Wait till you start installing your distro, most install processes have you create partitions anyway, and this will probably be easier and less likely to make a mistake.

As far as distro's go, Ubuntu and Kubuntu are really great distros, especially for your first distro. (the only difference between the two is Ubuntu uses Gnome, while Kubuntu uses KDE).

As far as booting problems, there won't be any. most distros will install a boot manager, so you can select what OS to boot from when your computer is turned on
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post #4 of 4
11/7/05 at 6:03pm
Thread Starter 
alright, thanks!!! Im going to check into SUSE and Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and see what each has to offer. Im trying to do this ACAP (As Cheap As Possable) as this is a trial thing. I think Linux has a lot going for it, so thats why I wanna try it. Thanks again for the info

James
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