I'm trying to make a dual boot Windows 2000-Debian system.
If my C: partition is NTFS, will that be an issue with Debian?

Shouldn't be... unless you want to access the NTFS partition from Deb, then you'll need to compile in NTFS support.

but you can use the NT's OS Loader for boot linux or NT.

I use the Grub for this work.

Since my question is closely related to this I will just ask
here, instead of making a new thread.

I also have NTFS partions on my Windows 2000, but I also
have totally unpartitioned space on my second hard disk,
does Debian detect and use this space automatically?

I know Red Hat does that, but um, thats a bit different
from Debian now isn't it

Also, what partitions and how big do I need, I been
reading the partitioning guide, but it's quite vague on the
subject and since I have only used Red Hat before, some
assistance would be appreciated.

With 1GB Ram I shouldn't need Swap at least, correct?


Go slow, I am a

I installed Debian with Knoppix, but installing from the distro CD should detect the same. It picked out the empty partition space with no problem. As far as dual booting, you can use a boot manager, I use LILO. I have no problems, and Win2K is on my first partition. Here is my /etc/lilo.conf (note: all the commentd lines have been removed)


user@host:~# more /etc/lilo.conf
vga=791
lba32

boot=/dev/hda

root=/dev/hda3

install=/boot/boot-menu.b
map=/boot/map

delay=20
prompt
timeout=150

default=Linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-xfs
label=Linux
read-only

other=/dev/hda1
label="Windows(hda1)"

I installed SuSE on a second partition while Win2k was on the first, but things did not go so well because the Win2k partition was NTFS formatted. Ultimately, I had to blow it away and reinstall it using FAT32, then the dual boot with SuSE went as smooth as Cool Whip.

Peace,
Phillip

P.S. This is on a work computer. All personally-owned computers are certified Windows-free!

Agree with pkoebbe, also redhat seems to be working well with FAT32, but not NTFS.

I have had no problems with reading NTFS from Linux on my dual boot. Writing is always shakey as the warning tells you...

;-)

I would have to agree. I have redhat 9 and win2k dual boot, and i have had no probs using either nt boot loader or grub.

For the partitions bit i usually make my own partitions with partition magic before i install linux, it makes things run a bit smoother.