Question about dual booting WinXp pro and Linux

[pr-man 1]

if i want to keep xp on there but dualboot do i just run the linux install and it will create its own partitions or do i have to use partition magic to make partitions and then install linux

[matttah 0]

If you have room no your hard drive for the linux partitions it will create its own in the space you ahve allocated. If your windows is the entire hard drive(size wise) you will have to either delete it, or resize it. To resize it you will have to use a program like partition magic or something. Then once that is done, you can just install linux it, depending on your distro sometimes the partitioning is done automatically for you. In this case generally it will say do you want to remove all prior partitions on hd, or would you like us to partition the remaining space on your hard drive. Select the latter.

Daum

[pr-man 1]

Ok when i installed xp i created only one 30 gig partition. so that means I have to use partition magic?

[danleff 0]

Also, from my perspective, it depends on what distro and version that you plan to use. If you have NTFS as the filesystem for XP be careful of Mandrake 10 and Fedora Core 1. There are issues with installing these versions next to an XP installation with NTFS. These seem to be corrected with Fedora Core 2 and Mandrake 10.1.

 

So the question is, what distro and version do you plan on using?

[matttah 0]

I am sure he is giong to use ntfs. But to answer your question you will have to use partition magic or some program that can resize the partition, and might i add that you should make a back up before you do anything because they can mess up your partition and what not. If you back things up you misewell just reinstall, get rid of that nasty spyware=) Then when you reinstall just create 1 15 gig (assuming the tnire hd is like 30 gig ) if you want it split in half for XP, then the other 15 for linux=0

Daum

[petegavin 0]

Hi, get an up-to-date distro like suse 9.2 (NOW A FREE DOWNLOAD!) and burn it to a DVD (it's a 3.2 gig file and takes about 24 hours on 500k adsl) Boot this from your dvd drive and follow the prompts. This will be able to resize your XP ntfs partion without difficulty and you can decide on the size (ie if you have a 80 gig drive of 1 XP partion just resize it to say 40 gigs and suse will use the other 40 gigs to create 2 linux partitions (1 for a swap file) and then install itself to the new partitions. It will also install a boot loader so you can decide which OS you wish to use at boot time.

 

Regards, Pete