I am getting ready to try and start using Linux for my everyday workstation at home. The thing is, I know its going to take a little time, so I still need XP to get me through the hiccups I might come across. I am looking of the best way to run both OS's. Should I partition my main hardrive (40 gig) 1/2 and 1/2 and install them both on there., or should I install another 40 gig hdd that I have here and setup the OS's on completely different drives?

what is the friendliest boot-loader to use? LILO, GRUB?????

Any help is appreciated.

well presuming that the process of installing that extra hard drive is no problem then that would probably be the easiest, though i have 3 dual boot computers and each contains but one hard drive. What you gain by using the separate HDs is that you have no way of corrupting that windows partition when resizing that partition (when using one HD). Another important consideration is if the 20GB partitions will give you enough room, or if you want to have 40+GB per OS. 20 GB is a lot of space, but if you start adding your mp3 collection or some video files, you find space fills up quickly.

You can of course set up a samba share to access your windows files from linux, but if i'm not mistaken they have to be read-only if your xp partition uses ntfs.

The most important consideration when talking about saving headaches is to make sure that windows is installed first as it is greedy about the master boot record. mind you, you can do it with linux first, but it is a bigger headache.

so far as the boot loader goes, i find that grub is more simplistic but lilo is popular among those nostalgic linux users of old.

hope this helps.

Hummm Dont agree :-( Windoze wont run when Lnx does so samba is useless. The right path would be to mount the fat/fat32/ntfs partition with the correct mount -t [type]

Sorry but I had to do so :-)

Samba is for file sharing between OS's. But it only works if you have two OS's. If you are running Linux, you are not running Windows (if you have only one computer), so Samba is useless in your case. The thing you want to be aware of at linux installation is that:

1.) Don't forget to make a SWAP partition (at least the size of your RAM)
2.) Make a / partition (ext3, because it's safer)
3.) Try to make a /home partition (if you ever reinstall Linux, your personal files (mp3, movies, documents ....) will not be touched, if you save them in your home folder)
4.) Make /home a FAT partition or share a FAT partition for file transporting between linux and Windows.
5.) You can mount a NTFS (read-only) partition under linux, but not a ext3 partition under Windows. So for file sharing between OS's you will need a FAT partition.
6.)Happy install. Whichever way you install it first, it is not a headache. Both ways are duable. Use GRUB for dual boot, if you are looking for an easy to use boot loader.
7.) For any questions, just post on LQ forums

Peace!

you're both quite right of course. i'm not quite sure what was going through my mind when writing that line.

one thing to note about mounting an ntfs patition though is that if you are using a 2.4.x kernel, then ntfs support is not included in the native kernel. there are two viable options to solve this problem.

1. upgrade to the 2.6 kernel, which will also solve some security vulnerabilities of the 2.4 kernel that have been well documented in these forums.

2. install ntfs support module for linux which can be found here:

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora1.html

be sure to pick the rpm version that matches your particular kernel. you can find your kernel version by issuing the command uname -r then install the rpm using the command rpm -ivh whatever_the_file_is.rpm.

sorry for the misinformation in my earlier post.

Got to step in again, sorry. The command is not uname -s (that puts Linux as output) The command you are looking for printing the kernel version is uname -r.

However be sure to read on NTFS mounting at linux-ntfs.... address lyceum posted before. That should do it. It's easy if you follow the instructions on that webpage or lyceums instructions on rpm installing. But first install Linux