Yes, it's always best to install windows first. Linux places a dual boot menu on your hard drive that would be hosed by installing xp (but Linux pretty much hoses the windows MBR too - it's a good idea to have a windows xp cd handy if for whatever reason you decide to remove Linux and you want to recover your windows MBR).

Will it have bugs? Possibly, nothing is perfect. But as long as you don't give it any exotic hardware, it should work a lot better than vista did when it was released. Mandriva has a livecd too (free as well) so if you could lay your hands on one of those, you would more or less know what to expect.

And on the subject of 32 versus 64 bit, Mandriva has traditionally shipped 64 bit dvds that allow installing either. If you don't like 64 bit, you should be able to install 32 bit from the same disc.

But again, the choice is up to you. Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva - all good IMHO.

So is Ubuntu more user freindly than Mandriva but it doesnt come with 64 and 32?

So would you reckonmend getting the newist version of mandriva or an older one? like 2007. something?

Also so when Im installing windows and it comes to the partion part of the install (im assuming Vista installs the same as xp) do I 1. Partion the drive how I want and formatt both the partion i will use for windows and the partion I will use for linux, or 2. Partion and formatt the windows partion and leave the linux partion as unformatted?


By the way..... 5 More weeks to go!!! YAYAY lol.

Tough question. Both are user friendly but Ubuntu has the larger community (by far) so it should be easier to find online tutorials, support, additional software packages, etc. Also you can order a free cd directly from the Ubuntu folks but it tends to take up to five or six weeks to arrive. And yes, it's either 32 or 64 bit. For about every 64 bit package, Fedora and Mandriva will install its 32 bit version too. Ubuntu doesn't but as I pointed out, it has some compatibility libraries that allow installing things like 32 bit flash, java, etc. on the 64 bit version of the system.

I don't recommend going back. Both Mandriva 2008 and the upcoming Ubuntu/Fedora will have better support for newer hardware. That said, the current releases run just fine on my own system (Core 2 Duo6600, Nvidia 7600, 4GB DDR2, 4xSATA2, ASUS P5B mobo). The only issue I have is that Ubuntu 7.04 can't use my PATA optical drives although it handles the SATA dvdrw very well. That may be solved in the new release, it can't say yet.

That would seem the best approach. When I first started using Linux, I shrank my xp partition so I could install Linux too. Dual-booting just wasn't very reliable until I ended up reinstalling the whole lot exactly as you suggest. No more issues since that day. I think that it's best to let each system carve out its own home.
My god, are they transporting that system on horseback?

Ok. So to make Ubuntu work on my system mint how hard is it to make the libraries or whatever work? Cause I wont be very profficent on linux for awhile lol.

Ok yeah I though so about the partions it makes sense.

Lol no 5 more weeks till I have enough money to buy the damn thing lol, then maybe 2 days till I get it. Im right on target (set myself a budget etc lol)

What do you mean by libraries?

Not very hard. And it's all documented on the net. All in all, it's just a matter of selecting the 32 bit compatibility libraries from the software repositories - nothing could be easier - and then installing nspluginwrapper yourself (for flash, java, adobe reader plug-in, ...) That's a bit more work but if you stick to the tutorials, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Well, if you're still to buy, do some research first. CPU, RAM, hard drives, no problem. Pay some attention to the motherboard though, some just are not very Linux friendly.

Lol man it sounds like ive got alot to learn...

Ok ill look up the mother board im getting.

Ok im getting this board.

Gigabyte GA-M52S-S3P nVidia nForce430 Socket AM2 ATX Motherboard

Looks OK. You may need to get the sound card driver from Realtek yourself as it was not included in the kernel until recently (but maybe that has been dealt with already, I can't tell).

Ok cool. I have a mint sound blaster uology card in my old computer that I may install in my new one. Will that have any problems or is it just a matter of downloading the driver from Sound Blaster...

Also does Linux have like a downloading program, like Imesh or Limewire? And if so can ya download files ment for windows?

Also Im planning to partion my drive into three. 1 for windows, 1 for linux and 1 for all my music/movies/videos/downloads and games. My question is will linux be able to see into and access the third partion to play the MP3's and Mpegs etc..

Sound Blasters should be supported although things may differ from vendor to vendor. I have a fairly recent one from Creative and it works perfectly (drivers already included with Linux).

How many do you need? Ten, Fifteen? Limewire has a Linux installer, There is Frostwire, DC+++, ... (have a look on getdeb.net if you're going the Ubuntu way - you'll find a nice selection of what's available). Don't know what you mean by "files meant for windows"? Do you software installers for windows? Or media files for windows? Yes, quite a few windows apps can be made to run if you install WINE first. I have things like Utorrent, Irfanview, FastStone Image Viewer, Dreamweaver, Flash, ... - they work fine but some apps do not (it''s a work in progress). If you mean media files, Linux will play those just as well as any windows box - as long as you make sure that you install the proper codecs from the online repositories.

No problem. Install the ntfs-3g driver in Linux and you'll even be able to write to your ntfs partitions. Just bear in mind that Linux out-of-the-box is more secured than windows and that you may have to tweak a few settings to be such allowed access. Nothing complicated, though.

One things that may not run so well is the games. Some will run with WINE, some will run with CEDEGA (an enhanced commercial version of WINE) but you shouldn't expect Linux to take everything. Then again, you still have windows, right? Plenty of folks around here are keeping their windows on just for the gaming part.

It's been over a year since I tried it, I admit. But I still feel like I'm regularly coming across howto's where the 32-bit part is just one line to install the package, and the 64 bit users have to set god-knows-what up.
The ones you stated are sufficiently annoying though... Don't get me wrong, I got most stuff to work, but it was just way too much pain.
I do use realplayer at least once a week to get video and audio streams of lectures... If helix doesn't work either, I'd have to uninstall it right there.
Anyway. The OP seems to be sold on it. Just try it then.

There are many choices for Linux but gaming is really for people who have a lot more experience than you have with Linux, I use windows for games and linux for the internet.
I think that Ubuntu is a good first choice for newbies and it will keep you intertained for about 3 months and then you will want to learn more about Linux, then you should start looking at distro's that are more challenging like kanotix or sidux, but perhaps you want a more moderate distro then Mepis is a good choice and if you have a older machine the Mepis lite is a good choice. You will find like many others that one distro will not completely do everything you want without
a learning and that means reading, if you have problems with that then stick with windows, Linux requires the ability to read and learn new ways to do things.

You might want to consider installing CoLinux (aka Cooperative Linux) in Windows given your focus on gaming. That would let you avoid dual booting and run Linux applications at native speed (unlike VMWare etc.). The main downside is it uses more memory since you're running two kernels at the same time, but that shouldn't be an issue in your case. You can modify CoLinux to use other distro's such as Ubuntu , Debian, Mandriva, Mepis or SUSE.

http://www.colinux.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoLinux
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...nux/index.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=81444 (using Ubuntu with CoLinux))

Which distro
 

Hi, I just received my live cd's.

Mint 3.0
PCLinux MiniME
Puppy 3.00
XBuntu
Slackware 12.0
OpenSUSE 10.2
SLAX

The only which ran in memory was SLAX, Puppy and PCLinux. It seems I don't have enough memory to run them live. XBuntu had a memory test which gave me the following error.

Failing address 000111da654
Bad 09080808
Error Bits 01000000
Count 1

None of the above with the exception of Puppy could recognise my mouse. I guess the main experimentation will start on Thursday when I will backup windows and start installing them onto hard drive.

It also described my chipset as i440BX when I was under the notion my chipset is x86...can anyone explain this anomaly? Does that mean I have chosed for the wrong chipset?

I don't know. What is it that you ordered? But maybe the chipset is simply identified by manufacturer/type rather than by architecture? There are a lot of x86 chips out there, you know.

If you receive indications that your memory may be faulty, download memtest and put it on a floppy. It is a very reliable application although it will take some time to complete its job. Don't take anything for granted because XP was doing fine. I ran a new computer with XP64 for three weeks and I didn't get any sign of hardware issues although I was getting more and more corrupt files. It's only when I installed Linux that I discovered that one of my sticks of RAM was (or had gone?) bad.