dual boot system

rtpca65 · 10-14-2006, 04:05 AM

Hello,
I was wondering is Ferora Core best for Linux? Can you tell me f my computer is good enough for dual boot with Fedora Core 5 and Win XP? My PC specs are AMD Athlon(tm) 1800+ 1.51GHz, and 512 of Ram. Also, Win XP is already installed on the harddrive i will be using,thanks

musicman_ace · 10-14-2006, 04:30 AM

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/articles/Home_Use

The link above has a couple of articles about choosing a distro. I personally don't like fedora, but it does have a large community support as do other distrobutions. You're computer hardware can definitely handle any linux distrobution. I'd double check your hardware in the Hardware Compatibility list just to find out if there are any small glitches or work-arounds, but now-a-days those are usually rare. The HCL is located at http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/

saikee · 10-14-2006, 04:57 AM

Every Linux can multi-boot.

Fedora has Grub which can boot over 100 systems.

In Linux dual boot is using a sledge hammer to crash a nut.

rtpca65 · 10-14-2006, 05:41 AM

thanks for your help. Also, will grub boot windows XP from an NTFS partition?

saikee · 10-14-2006, 06:49 AM

There is no PC system a Grub floppy (Grub can be burnt into a CD, see last link of my signature) cannot boot!

I am using two copies of Vista that are booted by Grub and I didn't even install a Linux to have it done, as documented by this thread.

rtpca65 · 10-15-2006, 12:47 PM

Will i have a problem if i am going to install linux on a external hard drive? There's nothing on it atm, it's a 250GB western digital hard drive

saikee · 10-15-2006, 01:03 PM

You will find the slow response of the USB device causes kernel to panic or the standard boot loaders (both Lilo and Grub) to hang. Thus special considerations are needed to boot a distro off an external hard disk and some distros like Puppy opts for a slow boot loader like isolinux.

rtpca65 · 10-15-2006, 05:22 PM

Is partition magic the best program for creating partitions? i heard people have problems with it,I was going to use it to create a backup and the Linux partitions. I decided to use my internal drive even though it is only 80GB

btmiller · 10-15-2006, 05:51 PM

I generally use the GParted LiveCD to do partitioning and have never had a problem (plus it's free). I am not sure if PartitionMagic can create Linux partitions (although you can use it to resize them and then use tyhe distro's install routine to create Linux partitions on the newly-created free space).

I'd highly advise making a back-up of your Windows system just in case something goes wrong.