Hi. I really want to try dual booting WinXP/Linux. I want to install Linux mainly to learn some new stuff--with the ultimate goal to set up a server for my network. I want to use it to do some testing on my website. I will not use it for external hosting (as that is a lot of work and responsibility). I think I tried installing MAndrake once on this machine, and could not get it to install. I have one HD with plenty of space even with XP installed.

Questions:

1) Do I need to do a total hardware audit before I pick a distro?
2) Which distro for my purposes?
3) Is it worth buying a distro with documentation etc?
4) Will I need special software to repartition by HD? I have one partition already with nothing on it--though I think it is formatted to NTFS.

Please offer some guidence. Thanks.

BTW, plenty of power for Linux on this box: 512 RAM, 900mghz, 150GB HD etc.

Mandriva 2006 will dual boot easily with that
just make sure you have enough room for it
10 gigs will be enough, more is better

Make sure that spare partition is empty
as Mandriva will nuke it for its own needs
Mandriva has its own utility for partitioning called disk-drake

Dont worry about buying a distro
most supply docs for free online

cheers
floppy

Please, do not take this personally, but we really are tired of these posts. Spend three weeks at any given Linux forum and you yourself will realize how annoying they are. We try to give you resources -- if you were observant, you would have gone to the Linux Newbie section of this site and found the sticky exactly about this and might have noticed the "search for similar topics" button when you started this. Just search for it -- there are literally hundreds of times this question has been asked on this very site. Do not take this personally, just try to be more observant. Pay attention to your surroundings here.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=356388
As you asked, however, no hardware audits at all are needed. It's 2006 and Linux installers have surpassed that of Windows.

speak for yourself
The guy asked a staight-forward question and got a straight-forward answer.
and I dont mind helping a newbie who is trying to do things for themselves.

floppy

I agree with floppywhopper; speak for yourself. It's not in the rules that you should not ask this question, so the original post did nothing wrong.

If you're tired of posts like this, just don't read them.

Mandriva Hardware
http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/hardware

Mandriva docs ( for older versions but still useful )
http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/commun.../documentation


edit
here is a nice little blow-by-blow installation how-to for Mandriva 2006
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/installmdv2006.html


floppy

Thanks for the kindness and advice. I never heard of Mandriva. I will check it out.

...and I went to all the stickies and to the Newbie section-- I even searched on "Dual boot." I didn't find what I needed--at least not in the first 10mins. That'w why I posted in "general". Distro questions should go in Distro--except that there is a different forum for each distro, so which distro forum would I go to?

peter_89: I know I have helped a few newbies out in areas which I am very knowledgeable. The con•de•scen•sion on your part is un-becoming.

Mandriva used to be Mandrake, so you actually have heard of it. The other one I would look into is Ubuntu, however I don't know about resizing partitions from the installer. Yes, normally you'd need a separate tool, but Mandriva(or at least Mandrake 10 did) has a built-in partitioner that can resize NTFS partitions. Otherwise I'd look at BootItNG