Hey all,

I'm fairly sure this has been answered before, but I couldn't find it ... search bar won't let me type in "32" or "64" because they don't meet the 3 character limit for words. Ah well. Searched through about 100 other posts before I gave up and came here. If it's been answered, and you know where, just point me to the thread and I'll happily go peruse.

I had my windows / fedora box dual booted but I've been upgrading the hardware and figured it's time to upgrade the software too.

I had a pretty nifty setup that let me share things like the bookmarks in firefox and my address book in thunderbird (among other things). I'm looking at installing fedora 9 64 bit (since I have a core 2), but will not be purchasing vista or win xp 64 (I'm running win xp 32 for older programs until it dies the hard death completely).

So here's the questions:

(1) I don't /imagine/ there's an issue with running fedora 64 and xp 32 and still being able to share regular files nicely, but perhaps the different versions of firefox and thunderbird (and whatever else) will not be so kind. Anyone done this and know it works ok?

(2) general question about fedora 9. Good build to use, or should I stick with 8 for now? (perhaps relevant is I have a new NVidia 8800 ... I've noticed a lot of people having problems with NVidia with fedora 9: still a pretty big issue, or easy to work around?)

(3) I forgot to burn the DVD for fedora before I built the new PC ... I noticed (again) the net install CD. Does this work over regular HTTP with fedora's site, or does it only work if there's a local dedicated build somewhere that you can connect to (like on a campus or something)? Rather burn 1 CD than 7 if possible .

Thanks all!

One remark did you intend to install you,re Windows XP on the new machine ?
Living in my country if I do so I have to call M. B.G. to get totally working including the updates.
Installing Fedora 9 I did with a install CD and a working internet connection.
Is Fedora 8 better than Fedora 9 it is different
For me getting my Nvidia 6200 working for 3D was a nasty job but I am just a regular user.
Hope this will help a bit

all the best

Well, between then and now I've already installed WinXP and am doing the updates (and installing LiteStep, FireFox, IrfanView, ThunderBird, etc, etc). I have an original copy and don't know if that makes a difference, but I've never had to call to change which computer it's on.

Getting the NVidia working has always been a bit of a tough job, especially with Beryl / Compiz, but I was wondering more whether Fedora 9 is working in a good way ... ie: is it stable, fully functional with the NVidia now, etc, etc.

I'm going to have to do a text install because it's trying to set my refresh rate on my monitor really high, but that's not a big deal and I can fix the conf file later.

So ... I guess I'll just /see/ how stable it is.

Just to keep this up to date (in case someone finds it looking for answers) ...

I haven't yet got to sharing information between the systems as far as actual programs. I have two drives shared between them and will be using that to have firefox on both installs and thunderbird on both installs try to use the same profile (so I can make changes in one that affect both).

Other than that, fedora 9 was a piece of cake to install after reading some of the problems with the nvidia drivers (had to do a text based install, then edit my xorg.conf to change the refresh rates ... then I could init 5 and work everything else, up to and including compiz fusion).

I'll update with more as I try to share files specifically between programs, but so far, so good.

To john Locke
Well I buy the original CD , but when I install it the number written on the CD is send to M B.G.
When the install is finished the icon come with message "Make contact with B.G server if you do not so after 3 months the system is not working anymore"
And I get a user number written on my PC.
When I do a update they looks if that number is present
If they do not do so with one CD you can get a lot of PC working

regards
ron lau

Ok, got the full dual boot going. Got two NTFS drives mounted nicely and sharing information so my firefox and thunderbird (among other apps) can share the same profiles.

All is well so far! I'm done with this thread.

My problem is similar.

I have WinXP_32 on a 80GB HDD and Fedora 9_64 on a 40GB HDD. I have installed them independently of one another at different times.

I would like to have a dual boot system without having to re-install anything. I also do not want to have to change anything in the CMOS and I most certainly do not want to swap and change power cables inside the computer (have been doing this for a year and I am getting sick of doing it).

What do I need to alter in the MBR (and other places) to get this to work?

Well, I'm not the one to answer this (and you should probably start your own thread to get a real answer), but just to be clear ... you're swapping the hard drive out every time you want to boot to a different system? Ouch.

I /think/ the answer might be almost as simple as installing grub as the boot loader, but you may have made it more difficult since the drives will not know about each other in their partition managers.

If it's possible to re-install FC9, that's the super-easy route that I took. Start with Windows on your main drive ... introduce your 40Gb as a second drive, but don't let windows format it. Then simply install Linux onto that drive, including the boot loader, and you're done. Linux will be able to see the entire windows drive and you'll have a boot loader to switch OS's.