Hi guys!

I have been pondering about switching from M$ to Linux for a time now.

I have tried several flavors and ended up choosing Slackware as my base OS, I have used Slax for a little time now, and I have tried Ubuntu, and I am really interested of learning Linux in a little bit deeper level.

Now im facing a small issue.

I have a SATA drive with 250GB, 3 partitions as follow:

10GB Windows

30GB program files and backups of installers
(I install everything in a different partition to windows for practical reasons)

195GB Multimedia.
note: Is amazing to see how much shit you have in music/videos/games... that drive is almost full...

The thing is, Im not sure if I am ready to completely delete Windows due to Gaming.

Music and video will be handled by VLC and I am sure I can do everything else in Linux with the help of virtualization and WINE but I do not want to reformat the whole drive...

Can somebody help me repartitioning my drive in a way that i can keep my backups just for the sake of nostalgia...

I want to know you opinions on this.
By the way there is no "Important Documents" that are not properly backed up in Inet and USBdrives.

I would highly suggest purchasing a second drive, if your computer has room for it. That way, should something happen to one of the drives (I/O failures of some sort, power surge, ... you name it) you still have the other one. Plus, hard drives are dirt cheap now; I remember having a 500MB hard drive on an MS-DOS 6.22 computer and having a bugger of a time filling it. Nowadays, 500GB is sufficient and costs about half as much as that 500MB drive did, back in the day.

I agree with indienick
I mean.... sure we can help you with partioning... but buying another hard drive would be a smart idea. Their cheap as heck these days.... i've spent more on a carton of jim beam. Lol

Don't even think about deleting Windows. I have done the linux thing for several years. Every 2-3 years I say 'hey, i'm gonna get rid of windoze once and for all.' I delete all my dos partitions and go completely *nix. Here's what happens every single time.

Most things are compatible, you can probably get most things to work. (READ: nothing is 100% compatible. WINE is a toy, Cedega is garbage. You will have headaches.) Keep in mind, gaming is about fun, not about engineering yourself between a rock and a hard place. Keep a small partition for dos, put your games and nothing else there. When you want to run a game, reboot into Windows, play your game, then reboot back into Slackware. Every game I have REALLY REALLY wanted to play, I've gotten to work after a plethora of issues - they work, but never look as good, never run as good, and take a lot of headache to get working in the first place.

99% of what I do, I do in FreeBSD (I have Slackware on the laptops), but when I want to play a game I run Windows. I hate it, but its honestly the best way.

The smartest thing you can do, is use the best tool for the job. Screws require screwdrivers, nails require hammers, and games require windows.

Everyone can flame me. Everyone can say 'I got WoW to work with WINE and its faster and better' - Whatever. If all you do is WoW, sure.. that's the most popular game on the planet and the WINE people spend all day making it work. Try running Dawn of War and get your mini-map to work. Try running City of Heroes and no be able to add people to your global chat list, or turn on environmental effects when water effects are turned on, try playing FIFA and have your gamepad buttons mapped to the same.

I love Slackware, I love FreeBSD and I love games. I also love pickles and ice cream, but I don't put them together.

OK everyone, flame away.

ok

@indienick & symon1980

I am thinking about purchasing another drive soon, but at the moment I cant.

I will install Slack today, I will delete everything i dont need and try to make partitions as follow:

10GB Windows
Rest unix (probably several flavors beside slack, I will play a little bit with Linux)

I have a question though, which is the best file system on my case?

Then I will figure out how to move my music and videos in to the linux partition. The only thing i will have windows is for gaming...

I have a question now that im typing about this.
What about vmware or virtualbox... do you think is better if I keep everything under linux and then use a virtual XP machine to play (i do not play games that stress out the machine like CRISIS or any other of that kind) I am sure i have played starcraft and call of duty on virtual machines...

is it better?

@soylentgreen
I don't see why you should be flamed. I'd use XP to game if I had a valid license
--Isn't it funny how everyone always offers you an XP install disk, but nobody ever offers you a valid transferable license you can use??


back to the OP
If your drive is almost full, then +1 for buying another one. You can resize your existing partitions, but I don't see how you could create a backup for the unimaginable error.

@RaptorX
Oh, we cross posted.


What filesystem? Hmmm, that can be a tricky subject. I use Reiser myself, and I am quite pleased with it. Others prefer ext3, jfs or xfs. ext3 is the safe choice.

I'd keep your Windows partition bigger than that. 20GB minimum. Both XP and the games you install will take a bite out of that 10GB partition you have in mind. Wouldn't want to run out of diskspace!

Moving files from Windows to Linux partitions is easy. Just a simple `mv /path/to/source /path/to/destination`
Remember that Linux can see a Windows filesystem, but Windows cannot see a Linux filesystem.

If you want more than one Linux distro, keep the root filesystem ~10Gb (smaller is possible, bigger isn't needed). But may I recommend VirtualBox? It's IMHO better than dual booting is all you want is to check out different distro's for comparison.


Maybe some scheme like this might work for you:
25GB NTFS - XP and games
10GB ext3 - root partition for distro1
10GB ext3 - root partition for distro2
1GB swap
204GB ext3 - /home

Technically 50% or more of the size of my drive is "expendable" I have no trouble reformatting is just laziness on downloading 130GB of music and movies... AGAIN... even though I have all the torrents and a nice conection... hell i dont mind at all, as long as i get rid of this headache.

So if that is what is preventing you from helping me, pay no mind to that, if there is no solution to the problem I will delete 90% of my content, but TODAY i will have Slackware and XP can go to hell with all its little annoyances, its mediocre shell (if theres any way i could call DOS a shell), its slowing down, defragging, antivirus... AHHHH!!!!. Ok it does not have to go to hell, it can stay there as a little puppy and allow me to play.

maybe 5GB are enough for XP... muhuhuhahaha

--Slackware download 44%
Time remaining 34:00 mins.

I don't know much about Slack (yet), but I agree with you needing a bigger XP partition. I found that a new install, plus the updates came to about 11 or 12Gb when i created an XP VM using virtualbox.

haha way to go man! idk, I've thought about getting another drive for Windows just for games, but I wanna keep it so seperate from my OS (having to either select an OS to load OR having to select one annoys me) I'd actualy get a removable tray. I'd setup a drive to be read by both so I can download stuff onto that other drive because I'd probably block off the Windows system from the internet.

Graphics can be a pain with older games and vmware or virtualbox. You certainly can run some games with a vm or WINE, but as soylentgreen pointed out, it'll be more reliable and less headache to run under regular old Windows.

Well, there's a ton of games that do still work well with WINE, I played Half Life 2 on it a lot and it ran fine (sure not as well as Windows) but older games I doubt you'd see much of a difference in how it runs on WINE or a VirtualMachine than on Windows itself. More intensive games though is another story.

nice im right now rezising my partitions in 30 mins I will start the installation... thanks for the help guys!

I could live if I could get wow and ventrillo to work properly in slackware.