Need some info on WinXp to Linux
 

Been looking around for a few nights on some version of Linux that will allow me to be running Windows Xp and switch over to linux. I just want to try it out and see what it is all about, I would rather not boot from a cd to install...and still want to run Windows, so is there anything out there like this?

tia

All Linux distros (I think) can be run parallely to Windows (XP or some other MS product). So there shouldn't be any problems. The question is, what your knowledge of linux is, to make the choice of the distro that gives an installation, you can handle. So, if you are a beginner, I suggest Fedora from RedHat http://fedora.redhat.com.

What do you mean, you would rather not boot from CD to install? You want to install from a floppy? Or did you mean a Live Linux version, that runs from a CD (like knoppix).

If you have any more questions, just post them here, and we+ll be glad to answer them for you.

I know you said you'd rather not boot from cd, but ( IMO) the live cd's are the best way to go for trying linux out and playing around with it. At least with this, if you don't like it you just take out the cd and everything's back to normal.

http://www.cygwin.com/ try this. Just out of curosity, why dont you wanna use a bootable cd? If you wanna learn linux, you should install it or run it from a bootable disk so you can experience the linux environment.

cheers!

What I mean by that is that I don't have access to a cd burner atm. So if there is a version you can do all instalation through a setup.exe or sommat, that would ace. Not sure if that is possible or not, but it's what I'm looking for. Thx for the link, checking now. :)

cygwin will work, there is a port of kde for it too ( everything runs a little slow though). there is also colinux, but I've never used it so I can't comment on how well that works.

If you have broadband, you could do a FTP installation of Suse 9.2.

instructions are here:

Suse 9.2 ftp install

Just go to Suse's homepage, then follow the instructions from there.

http://www.cygwin.com

I'm gonna give this a try for now, thank you all for the information...pretty nice place you all have here.

Does Cygwin not have a graphical interface? Or is it just a command prompt?

depends on what you install, ( by the way the installer is a gui), by default the cygwin environment is command line, but it does have packages for X and a couple window managers. IIRC, the kde port is a seperate project, where you download .exe's of the different parts and install them.

Going at it again, removed and downloading all that it offers. So while I wait, does anyone here use Cygwin? I'm not finding much documintation on it, and I'm just wondering what all it offers, and maybe a few tips for when i get it going.

If you don't have a CD burner, there are 4 options -
You can buy a magazine like LinuxFormat or Linux Magazine- they usually come with CDs or DVDs with a Linux distribution on them. I have something like 15-20 different distributions lying about because of that. But then, you may want to be careful that you don't grab a "Computer Science Degree Required" distribution.
You can see if some friendly members of your local LUG will help you get some distro CDs. They are usually a helpful lot.
You can ask UbuntuLinux for a free CD. They will send it to you, but since they are preparing to ship the latest version, it is going to take a while.
You can use other media; make a SuSE FTP install as suggested or a Debian floppy install. Debian is not recommended for complete beginners, though.