installing 2 operating systems, windows xp and linux?
 

Hi all,
im new to the world of linux but it realy appeals to me. im thinking of installing some kind of linux on my system, probably mandrake since i hear thats the best?? however, i dont wanna give up my windows xp since i know how to work that and i know nothing about linux yet, so i want some familiar os for emergencies.

is it possible to have linux as well as windows xp running on a single computer, in a way that i can choose at startup which os to use? wont that cause any troule?

btw, does linux support microsoft software like ms office? if not, is there a way that i can still open my .doc files?

i hope im not too anoying asking all these simple questions but i know nothing about it yet and i realy wanna learn,.

thanks
ward

Yeah, you can do it, but you'll need to have some non-partitioned disk space available when installing Linux. You can also use a Fat32 partition, but it's simpler to let Linux create the partitions for you. I think OpenOffice.org is the program you'll want to use to open Microsoft Office files. I'm new to it all too, but hopefully I can point you in the right direction at least.

Try searching: 'Dual Boot' & 'OpenOffice.Org'

Wo, that's right. There's no problem (even for a n00b) to set up a windows/linux hybrid system in the following order:

1) Install Windows and leave free space on your HDD by creating smaller partitions than that would actually fit on your drive.

<<< or >>>

Decrease size of your currently used windows partitions. This can't be done with those standard hdd utilities like fdisk or so. You'll need special software for this. (See Partition Magic, e.g.)

For both: You'll need at least 1.5 GB disk space for a really funny running linux. If you're very new to it, I'd allocate about 5-10 GB (If you got enough). So you don't need to configure special other devices if you ever wanna rip a dvd or so :-)

Linux uses 2 types of partitions (...). A standard file system partition and a swap partition. Swap should be 2 times of your RAM MB (but at least 128 MB).


2) After you have installed Windows or prepared your HDD as described go for Linux installation.
I use Debian from the scratch - I think the most powerfull and easy to configure distribution, but I don't know if it's so useful for a beginner to use Debian. If you got time :) I recommend but else...

The key word you need to know for booting different OS' is your "bootloader". There're currently 2 widespread utilities. "lilo" and "grub" (grub is the newest, but I use lilo). You Distribution will install and setup those automatically. When you're asked during installation/set up if you want to include other installed OS' into your startup menu: just confirm. On the next reboot, you'll get a list of the installed systems.


Good luck!

as stated before, you can indeed dual boot linux and windows xp. you can even multiboot multiple linux/*nix distros with windows xp. the only thing about the first reply i don't agree with is that you need non-partitioned hard drive space. linux installation is perfectly capable of resizing your existing hard drive space to make room for your linux install. whether or not it's perfectly safe and won't do any damage to your existing windows install is another story. actually anytime you resize an existing partition, there's an inherent danger of fscking your windows install. so while it's not necessary to have non-partitioned hard drive space, it may be much safer to have some, or to use a windows partitioning utility first for resizing an existing windows partition. also when you install linux, the installer should auto-detect your windows xp install and provide you with a choice of using either grub or lilo as your boot manager. the boot manager will let you choose between booting into linux or into windows. i myself use grub, but others use lilo. either should work fine for you as you'll just have to bite the bullet and pick on since some users have had trouble with grub and others have had trouble with lilo.

i also whole heartily agree with using open office. works just fine and dandy with my word 2000 docs. not really sure about the other ms office component alternatives in open office though. but if you really need to use MS Office, crossover office uses wine to allow you to install ms office into linux. it works decently from what i've heard.

great , ill try right away, thanks for your help, ill lel you know if it worked out

and again, thanks

There is a how to for that. Make sure that when you run defrag that it moves ALL the data to the beginning of the drive. It likes to leave some out in the middle. I think it is done to make you risk loosing windoze when installing Linux. My opinion.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ticle&artid=73

Yep, I wrote it. Hope it helps.

Later

:D :D :D

Ok all the above are true and in depth

when i started i
-i defraged my windows drive
- downloaded a free trail version of partiton magic as i only needed it for a couple of days
-partitoned the drive to allow for a 10GB new linux partition
-booted mandrake cd1 (I have found by far the most easy to install) I followed simple instruction and it set up root and swap partitions etc for me.
Mandrake comes with perfectly good boot loader that will allow you to choose between linux, windows, linux-conf and floppy at start up
I use openoffice for all my college work including a few simple powerpoint presentations with OpenOffice Impress

Whoooo hooooo.

Welcome to Linux

Later

:D :D :D :D