Hi, I didnt know where else to stick this post so i hope i chose the right place. Basically for the last 4 years i have been very happy with my current computer. It was a dual-booted, Win 2000/debian system.
Being one of those people who really loves games Win2000 was necessary for that, everything else, i used debian.
unfortunately, my beloved computer has had it. I'm not what you would call very experienced when it comes to setting up debian or any other os for that matter (a friend of mine introduced me to debian and set it up on my computer, but that friend has moved to the states, dammit) so i am looking to buy a computer that is really good for games and is dual-booted preferably with debian and winxp.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.
G. Menez

you won't buy one preinstalled to dual boot. not unless you find someone locally to you who's willing to do it for you specifically.

Thanks for replying acid, afraid i dont know anyone locally who does that. Why does noone offer dual-boot? Hmmm... looks like this is going to be more of a pain than i thought...

No, you won't get a preinstalled dual boot computer. In fact I wouldn't have though you could get a computer with debian preinstalled, linux preinstalled computers tend to be Linspire or Mandrake.

Contact your friend in the states and see if (s)he had any computer friends back here who might be willing to set you a computer up.

If your willing to put a few days work in to it, read the documentation and how-tos and choose your hardware carefully you should be able to set up everything perfectly.

Generally speaking your average debian user would probably baulk at the idea of haivng anythign preinstalled on anythign they buy, there would really never be a business model far that. debian is not a newbie friendly distro, so someone who is comfortable using debian shouldn't normally think twice about installing it. if you are not comforatble doign it i would strongly suggest moving towards a distro like fedora / suse or even linspire as mentioned above.

Debian -- Computer vendors that pre-install Debian

Not sure if any of the vendors do dual-boot, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
A couple of the laptop companies will, but then you end up paying for windows also.

Hmm...
When referring someone used to debian to something more newbie-friendly, I'd think of Ubuntu before any rpm based distribution :-)

Then again, I'm of course very biased :-)

Groetjes,

Kees-Jan

Mepis is also a good choice.

I don't know about preinstallation, but I do know that eMachines computers are generally pretty Linux-friendly (at least the two I've had have been). So if you got an eMachine with XP preinstalled, you could just resize the hard drive (and since you just bought the computer, there'd be no data to lose, and eMachines gives you restore disks) and install Debian, Ubuntu, or Mepis. Make sure to install Grub to the MBR, and you're all set to dual-boot.

Maybe there's a local Linux User Group that could help you out with the installation.

I know my University has a Debian Users Group that occasionally runs install-fests.

If you like ease of install and a Debian base, I am on my third machine that I have done a hard drive install of Knoppix 3.7 (3.9 was iffy) and am really impressed with the speed of the machine and the user friendliness of the OS. It auto recognized things that I had to download drivers and struggle to get windows to run with. Plus it is an awesome crash recovery tool for several of the virused to death windows machines that belong to the guys at work. I have about given up on most of the other flavors I have tried, and am pretty much going to stick with what works great for me. Even though the thought of building another Slackware machine is appealing. Good luck with whatever you choose.

Hi, again done a bit of shopping around and your right not many offer dual-boot. I found one company advertised on google that said they would do it for me. Now i'm not one to throw money away and i was wondering if anyone has ever bought a computer from calibre computers. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts on these guys because i really dont want to get ripped off.

Thanks again
G.Menez

Depends what you mean by the "computer has had it". If the hard drive is alright then you could just plug the old drive into the new box and there is no reason why it (Debian) should not work. You could then install w2000 on the new drive and dual boot off different drives.

I dont know exactly what happened but it resulted in a small fire inside the computer, which left everything melted or badly burned. Pretty sure the melted stuff doesnt work but i could get someone to test the hard drive, it is covered in marks but apart from that doesnt look as bad as the rest of it. Thanks

If you had a fire in the box then the most likely cause was the power supply failing. This in turn could have resulted in power surges which would in all probability have destroyed the drive as well. It's worth having the drive checked to see if it still works though.
On a more salient point though, a fire should never have happened and the PSU must be very poor. Most PSU's I have come across would trip out in the event of a short circuit and the possibility of a fire should never happen in any box. This could have taken the building with it.

Hi,

I suggest you try your luck at installing Debian by downloading an ISO
image from this site : http://www.debianpure.com/
But of course, before you buy a new computer, if it is what you're planning,
check the HCL here (hardware compatibility list) to see if your hardware is
linux-friendly. Who knows, you might even like installing Debian !

If you're not sure and don't want nothing done to your Hdd, try the Knoppix
LiveCd, as suggested above.

cheers