Should I get rid of XP?
 

Hi all,

I have Debian woody installed and everyhting's fine. A few days ago, a cd of Mandrake v.7 fell on my hands and I want to install it. But I have to format my Windows NTFS Partition. My question is, is it worth to completely remove Windows and install two linuxes? I mean, all my Windows apps & Games will go rubish?

Any advice would be appreciated

well do you need windows for something that cant be done on linux?, if yes then keep it. It doesn't hurt to just use it for games ;). And couldn't you try triple booting if you want to try mandrake?

Off course the games and apps will go rubish. In Windows, many of the things are written to registries. In Linux, it would theoreticaly and sometimes practically be possible to insatall a program, reinstall linux, without deleting the installed program and still be able to run the program in question. In windows, once you reinstall, inspite of programs and games being on a separate untouched partition, this would not work as the registries would be purged at the reinstall.

Currently, most of my disk is used by Windows. I f it were FAT, I would use fips in order to split the partition. Now, with NTFS, is there a possibility of splitting the win partition to be used with Mandrake?(I don't want to delete Debian:D )

IMHO, it's definitely worth booting more than one linux, if only to get a feel for the different package management systems, config tools and so on. I wouldn't bother with Mandrake 7 though, it's far too old and not even supported by Mandrake any longer (meaning they stopped updating it years ago). If you can lay your hands on a more recent RPM-based distro, a newer Mandrake, Fedora or SuSE for example, I would go with that.

Personally I keep windows installed for games only. Everything else is Linux.

As much as I loath windows, I would keep it there until you're comfortable using just linux for everything, or if you're a keen gamer.

Thanks guys!;) I'll think about everyhting you told me and take a decision!
Your help was very important to me!:newbie:

I would recommend keeping your Xp until you have become proficient in Linux and are 100% sure you won't be needing it any more. While I have been running 100% Linux for many years now, it took time. I kept running DOS for quite a while before finally migrating to Linux completely.

How big is your hard drive? I just set mine up with five partitions--NTFS Windows XP, FAT32 (files to share among all three OSes), Mepis Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. Of course, I have 160 GB of space. If you have the space, triple-boot. It's a great way to explore, and Mandriva's partitioning tool is great.

Me too, and if enterprise&enterpriseD is anything like me, one day he'll be doing some housekeeping on his linux system, boot to windows to check something and realise he doesn't need it anymore.

I dont see the point in dual booting debian with mandrake, keep xp for now. Whats the point dual booting anyway?

The point would be to be able to use the different package managers (urpmi and apt), learn about the differences between the systems and learn more about Linux. Although, if the OP is happy with Debian, there's not a lot of reason to change, other than being able to play with a different system. I wouldn't go to the bother for a distro as old as Mandrake 7 though.

The point in dual booting is to be able to learn the use of many OS, while still having a couple or one of them running stable. :) Atleast in my oppinion...