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Dual Booting Linux/WinXP

post #1 of 10
8/30/03 at 4:32pm
Thread Starter 
My 8890 should be arriving this Tuesday and I it was recommended by my professor to dual boot the beast with Linux and winXP.

I've never used linux before...I've never dual booted before either, so I just wanted to know a couple of things:

1) What release of Linux is probably the best? Of course, a free version would be preferred, but I need something stable and GUI. I believe my school uses redhat...is that the same as Mandrake? I'll be using it to develop Java applications primarily.

2) How much space should be given to Linux? I ordered the 60gb 7200 rpm drive.

3) Also, will Linux be able to read the NTFS file system?

3) How does one go about the dual boot...Should I install Linux/Windows first?...does it matter?

Thanks for the help,
Shoeman22
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post #2 of 10
8/30/03 at 6:05pm
1. everyone is going to give you a different answer for this: their favorite distro. if you're a newbie to linux, you probably want to stick to redhat or mandrake. mandrake was forked off of redhat a while ago, so it's not really the same anymore. both are gui and relatively easy compared to other distros. pretty much all distros for personal use are free.

2. it depends on how much stuff you install, how much you use it, etc. you can do as little as 1 gig, or up to 60 or more. if you're dual booting and using both os's for an equal amount of time, you might as well do 30/30.

3. it can read ntfs fine. there is write support, but it's very experimental and messes up data a lot; you probably shouldn't use write support.

4. you'd use a boot loader with a menu to dual boot and choose between os's to boot. it doesn't really matter a whole lot which you install first. i usually do it based on the boot loader you want to use: if you want to use grub or lilo (linux's boot loaders), then install linux second. if you want to use NTLOADER, then install windows second. whichever one is installed second will be the last one to write its boot loader to the MBR.

just a tip: using NTLOADER to boot linux is more complicated than using grub or lilo to boot windows.
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post #3 of 10
8/30/03 at 6:06pm
Ok in order.
1) Use what the school uses. It will be easier on you.
2) minimum 20G
3) Ntfs is readable if you recompile the kernel to do so. By default no read in RH. Last I played with RH. DO NOT conpile for write unless you know what you are doing.
4) Install XP then the flavor of your choice. If you do Linux first XP will trash the boot sequence for you. For a Linux newb it's no fun to try to fix. But you will learn how if you do it.

Good luck
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post #4 of 10
8/31/03 at 2:44am
Thread Starter 
xiphux and bsmith thx for the info!

Today I downloaded the iso's for redhat 9...I didn't realize it was completely free because I've seen it for sale at BestBuy for quite some time and I thought I'd need to purchase it...cool!

Just a couple of other more questions on the topic.

I have an external hard drive that I use for games and mp3's and stuff...currently it is in NTFS, but I'd love to allow both windows and linux to use it for storage...is there a filesystem that both windows and linux can read/write from effectively?

Also, I was at the redhat site today checking on the file system...ext3 appears to be the most up to date one, correct?...can windows read/write to it?

Thx again for the help and if you know of any good (newbie) books or websites on redhat/linux and shell commands, I'd appreciate it.
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post #5 of 10
8/31/03 at 3:01am
the only filesystem that both can use is fat32, i believe. but that's not a journaling filesystem, so you're a lot more likely to corrupt all your stuff in a system crash or freeze.

all the filesystems are being updated regularly; it's more a matter of what kind of stuff you'll be putting on it. ext3 is slower because it's a Journaling Block Device (JBD) layered over an old filesystem - ext2, but has more advanced journaling options, such as ordered journaling and full data journaling. reiserfs is a quick filesystem that handles many small files well, but only does metadata journaling. xfs is a filesystem designed for very large files (it was originally developed by sgi for IRIX servers), and also only does metadata journaling.

windows can't read from or write to any linux partition. microsoft hates linux.

i can't really direct you to any books, but you'd probably find tldp.org useful. (The Linux Documentation Project) also, once linux is installed, the 'man' command is really useful. so 'man cp' will bring up the full manual page for cp, the copy command.
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post #6 of 10
8/31/03 at 12:26pm
Thread Starter 
Xiphus thx again.

from your explanation of the file systems, reserfs sounds the best for what I'm going to be doing, creating and running beginner java programs...correct?

Since fat32 seems to be kind of corruptable and given the fact that Linux can read NTFS, I think I'll leave the extra hd NTFS for now...I just want to be able to listen to my mp3's while I program...plus if write support is in beta now, it probably won't be long before good write support for NTFS is around.

I visited the tldp.org site...it looks like it will be very helpful...thx a lot, and I'll be sure to try the 'man' command next time in the lab.

BTW, is there a command that lists all the commands?...so I could pull up the list of all commands, and then 'man <command>' to see what each one does?
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post #7 of 10
8/31/03 at 1:26pm
yeah, reiserfs is probably the best to run a linux system off of.

there may be good ntfs write support soon... but since ntfs is a proprietary microsoft filesystem, they have to reverse engineer it, which is not a fast process...

there may be a command to list all commands, but i can't really recall off of the top of my head.... however, all the commands on your linux system are in a few specific directories. you can just cd into those directories and ls to see their contents, and you'll see the commands available to you.

/bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin are normal binary directories which contain commands available to all users.

/sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin are system binary directories, which contain system administration commands available to root only.

another thing you can do: bash, the shell, has tab completion. so you can type a few letters and tap tab a couple times to see all the commands that start with that. so you could press tab without typing anything to see all commands... however, when i do that on my system, it asks me if i really want to display all 3744 possibilities, which is a lot of commands...
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post #8 of 10
9/1/03 at 12:24am
Command references (or "wish I had this 6 years ago"):

http://www.sloppycode.net/nix/
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...ce/unix_guide/

http://www.scripps.edu/rc/training/u...heatsheet.html

I also have a USB harddrive. I use FAT32. No problems yet.
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post #9 of 10
9/1/03 at 1:21pm
Thread Starter 
I checked out the websites you posted dirtboy and they look like they should be of amazing help to me to get up to speed on Linux.

tab completion is nice as well...when you say bash the shell...is that the default shell I'll get with redhat?...or is it something I need to download extra? BTW...what exactly is the shell...just a Linux DOS prompt right?

Thx,
shoeman22
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post #10 of 10
9/1/03 at 3:28pm
bash, the Bourne Again SHell, is included with almost every major linux distribution nowadays, you don't need to download it. It is essentially what you would call the linux equivalent of the dos prompt.
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