Hi All,

I am brand new to Linux. I have been a Windows desktop programmer for 15 years and I just decided that it is time for me to get with the times and at least familiarize myself with Linux. I managed to download Fedora 11 and made a bootable CD out of it. Currently, I am running Linux off of the boot CD, I believe it's called the LiveCD, but I want to permanently install it onto one of my HD's. However, I would like to make my PC a dual boot system, in which I can boot into Fedora or Windows XP.

Now here comes the tough part; I have two hard drives in my PC. My first HD (Master) consists of a single partition and has Windows XP installed on it. I have a second HD (slave) in my PC that currently has three partitions on it. My question is whether or not I can just not touch my first hard drive, and install Linux onto the second partition of my second hard drive, and yet still have a dual boot system? I am hoping that this can be accomplished! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please keep in mind that I really am brand new to the Linux world. So far I love it though!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks,

The Newbie

Yes, you can. I think you can choose the second partition of the second HD to create new partitions for linux when you install linux onto your system.
A boot menu will be appeared when you restart your system after you installed linux system. There are two items in this menu.The one is for windows and other is for linux.

that is no problem most put fedora on an extended partition or like me a different disk.

fedora 11 uses the ext4 partition format EXCEPT FOR THE BOOT partition that is ext3
so you will need a 100 meg partition for boot and grub then a aprox 9 gig ( that is the VERY min. size ) 20 to 30 gig or more would be best for the top " / " partition.

for dual booting there is TWO ways of doing this
1 )
put fedora's grub boot manager on THE MBR overwriting the Microsoft bootloader
fedora will auto detect MS and add it to grub

2) this is what i do
install grub in the first LINUX partition and leave MS's boot loader ALONE
( MS has a habit if "fixing" a working grub bootloader by reinstalling ms's THAT DOSE NOT see any other os other than Microsoft)

then use the "dd" method ( google dual booting ) to copy the fedora.bin to the MS c drive

---------- VERY IMPORTANT ----------------
remember fedora is a FAST development distro . As such not everything works correctly all the time.
Updates will and DO break things . THERE IS NO ati 3d card driver for fedora 11 so if your 3d card is ati there is no 3d for it. Sound may or may not work ( on-going bug)

If you like fixing things then fedora is great.

Thanks John!

Which distribution would you rather suggest that I install?

axnst1,

Quote:

Which distribution would you rather suggest that I install?

Almost all distros are good. You can try as many as you can they're free: try all the top 5 from the distrowatch you can visit here each distro contains link where you can download an iso image to burn.

To my experience, as long as your machine is not really old, Linux Mint has had no driver issue and it installed smoothly, plus the codex for media formats are mostly enabled at install, so you don't need to install them. You can download the latest Linux Mint here.

In order to dual boot or multi-boot with more than two OS's you can do it easily with Grub bootloader which is auto installed under Mint. Better read first a short tutorial about Grub here so that you will have confidence in manipulating its powerful capabilities.

Welcome to Linux World of Freedom and cooperation.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

for a new linux user i would recommend Ubuntu