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Dual Boot

09:48 / 08.05.04

Im planning on having a dual boot, windows and linux. The question is, what linux distro should I use? It would have to be free, and fitting for a beginner like myself. Ideas?

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

10:20 / 08.05.04

Free as in no-cash iso's of easy distributions are hard to get hold of nowadays.

Mandrake is a great easy-to-use ditribution. They've had financial trouble recently, so it's tricky to download an iso of the latest version (10.0) without joining the Mandrake Club. If you do, I think it's only a few pounds, you can download the latest iso's over BitTorrent. You can also buy CD's of the latest version for a shockingly small amount of money at The Linux Emporium

You can easily get isos of Debian and Gentoo.
They are a lot harder to install.
You can't get isos at all for Fedora, in my opinion, lacks in features and programs. But you can get free isos. It's the new, free-er incarnation of Red Hat's old desktop distro.

Here is a great major-distro comparison site.

The other choices are a far more commercial distribution such as Xandros or Lycoris. Theses are very polished indeed, but you do need to pay for them.

So, if I were in your position, I would buy a couple of Mandrake Linux CD's from the Linux Emporium. It's cheap, they deliver fast and you get a very up to date, very easy to install distribution.

If you're feeling really brave, download a set of Debian or Gentoo isos. But I don't think I could have installed them when I first started on Linux - you may be luckier!

10:33 / 08.05.04

Thanks. I was also thinking about one of the smaller distros like Peanut Linux or something like that? Also. I suppose you`ll have to use something like Partition Magic(PM) prior to installation, any experience with that one? Or do you have a simpler method?

I currently have to drives c: (main) and d:, which contains a system recovery-like option. It seems like PM suggest I should use "After D:Presario_RP but before C:Presario" or "Before D:Presario_RP" for my new OS. What exactly does this entail, and which one should I use? Also, does 33835.4 MB equal 33GB or 3GB? Thanks.

10:53 / 08.05.04

It may be alright, but I think you may be in a world of Compaq-hidden-partition pain when you try to install the Linux.

I'd skip partitions and hard-disk installation for now and go for a Knoppix CD of some kind. They work quite well.

You have 33GB.

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

11:04 / 08.05.04

Hmmm.. partition magic isn't really necessary, with most modern installs. Fedora, Mandrake and SuSE all have built in partitioning software with them. It'll give you a nice 'map' of the drive, tell you where you have free space and how much you have on each partition.

Peanut Linux is something that I've not seen before. Smaller is usually harder - the easiest linux distros, as a rule of thumb, are usually also the biggest. One note on Peanut linux is that it doesn't appear to have a nice graphical installer/central configuration programme. Both Mandrake, SuSE and Fedora have this, and it makes things an awful lot easier.

If you do want to install Peanut, you seem to have the option of doing the partitioning from within the CD-installer, if you are installing from the CD-ROM. You will however, be thrown straight onto the command line by the looks of things, so Partition Magic is probably a good idea.

So, if you really must install Peanut Linux, you need to make a Linux partition somewhere on the drive. You will need about 3GB or so. To get this you can:

1. Shrink the C: Drive, but not if it's NTFS

2. Shrink the D: Drive, but not if it's NTFS

3. Use space on the disk which hasn't been allocated to C: or D:. If the windows system is a standard OEM install, this won't amount to more than a few megabytes - not enough. But if it's a DIY install, and you've deliberately left a few Gb unpartitioned, you can use this space.

4.You can delete the D: or C: partitions, rewrite them as smaller. This will involve losing your windows install and/or your recovery partition. This may not be a good idea! It may also be the only option if there is no unpartitioned space, and both D: and C: are NTFS.

All that said, it may be that the latest Partition Magic will be able to shrink NTFS drives. I don't know. Try it and find out.

What partition magic is suggesting, I think, is that you make a linux partition in some unpartitioned space between the C: and D: drives, or after the D: drive. Check that this is enough (about 1.5GB is the minimum usually) and choose whichever. If it is less than 1.5GB, you may have to shrink a drive or delete a partition.

33835.4 MB = 33.04 GB
(1GB = 1024MB)

11:16 / 08.05.04

Another thing (bare with me), those linux live-cd`s that just boot of your computer, which is the best one? And, does any of them make for easy installation to the hard drive if I want that?

11:17 / 08.05.04

Seriously, Compaqs are a bit weird, don't be tinkering until you know exactly how to get out of any trouble you may find yourself in.

11:18 / 08.05.04

Knoppix is one, there are versions of it like Morphix, they all give some installation options.

19:40 / 08.05.04

Ok, I used Partition magic to make a linux and swap partition.. would they be refered to as dev/hda1 and dev/hda2 under installation? Also, does it autodetect the hardware etc. or will I have to configure it myself during installation? It`s Red Hat 9 btw..

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

19:52 / 08.05.04

Hardware detection is very good nowadays, but don't expect perfection, especially with a heavily vendor-customised machine like a Compaq. You may have to do some tinkering under the hood once the install is done. I tend to find that as long as I have a graphical system up and running, hardware can be setup later - determine which devices are playing up, research them etc. I tend to make sure that I have a working graphical display and a network connection first.

Yes, swap and the root partition will be referred to as /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2 (or just hda1 and hda2).

20:01 / 08.05.04

Ok, I`ll give it a whirl then.. only one hour left of downloading.. I can use the rescue disks if everything goes to hell, right?

23:57 / 08.05.04

Oh yes.. I am now talking to you from Red Hat Linux 9! I can actually feel the dark side of the force!

00:45 / 09.05.04

A few things.. If anyone would care to help me out..
How do I install blackbox (cant find the damn questionmark)
How do I log on as root

07:31 / 09.05.04

There are lots of ways (you can have as many users running at the same time as you like). Easiest way to get root privileges is to open a shell window and type
su
(for SuperUser)
type in the root password, and you can then use the CL as if you were root.
I'm not familiar with RedHat (I'm a SuSe user), but if you're using KDE or Gnome there will be a button somewhere (usually the same one you use to logoff) which will let you "Start new session". Then when asked to login put in root for user and you're in.

09:12 / 09.05.04

You can also hit Alt-F2 or use the 'Run Command' option from the menu, then type 'kdesu' followed by the name of the applicaton you wish to run as root. You'll be prompted for the root password, then the app. will start with root privileges.

You shouldn't need to do this for any normal tasks, though. Don't run anything as root that doesn't require it.

21:35 / 09.05.04

su stands for Switch User. If you have multiple users you would use "su " to switch, but by leaving the username black it switches to root.

11:30 / 09.07.04

To any wondrous geeks: I'm about to install Mandrake on my slave hard drive and I'm wondering if I should remove my primary hard drive (with Win2K on it) during the installation procedure? Or am I being overly paranoid?

14:43 / 09.07.04

If you remove your primary HD then the secondary may become the primary (depending on jumper settings)! The bootloader (probably grub or lilo) would then end-up installed on the secondary HD's MBR after you replace the primary. You might also have to mess about with the BIOS. This is not what you want.

In my experience most modern linux distros (e.g. redhat/suse/mandrake) are very forgiving and will detect your pre-existing Windows installation without any problems.

So leave the primary HD, hda, alone and make sure that your linux stuff gets installed under hdb, hdc or hdd.

You can always create a windows rescue disk beforehand as an insurance policy

Hope this helps