Dual Booting two Linux Distros - Erasing Windows 7 completely. Advice/Opinions??
 

Hi all. Simply put, I am disgusted with Windows 7. Especially since finding Linux. I have evaluated most of the major distros and initially found that Ubuntu and Fedora were giving me errors concerning my hardware for audio. To no avail could I find anything to work to resolve them. But then, I installed Linux Mint and it's worked like a charm and hassle free. However, I am up for a more challenging/educational distro. So what I would like to do is completely wipe my hard drive. Then install Toorox as perhaps my primary drive/partition and then afterwords dual boot Backtrack along side it.Can anyone foresee any problems with any of this?

I have a Toshiba Satellite L655D laptop, 320 GB SATA hard drive, 3 GB RAM, and an AMD64 Dual Core processor existing. Will the Linux system that's first installed be able to handle the drivers for those critical devices? Any objections to my wanting to erase Windows 7 completely?

Thanks for anyone's suggestions!

Are you experienced with Gentoo installation?
I have not eperienced Toorox, but it is based in Gentoo, which is a bit complicated to install, maybe Toorox is simpler, but just wanted to let you know my experience with Gentoo. Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Slack & Linuxmint(Debian based) are much easier for a newbie.

I can only second what Eddy has written. As main system you should install something that you can easily setup and maintain and that knowingly supports all your hardware, the second (third, fourth) system should be the one for educational purposes.

Hi EDDY1,

Yes, I actually dabbled with Gentoo yesterday morning for a couple of hours trying to install with the command module but I could not get the minimal LiveCD to understand that I wanted to install it to my hard drive. I had resources all around me and no matter or which way I tried a command I could not boot. Also, it suggested to use Links to read the Install guide in a 2nd window but Links could not establish my connection. That's been most of my experience there. I did also get and ran their new 10 year LiveDVD which has the KDE interface as default. Two problems I had with that is I really do not prefer the KDE interface. I much rather have GNOME whenever possible and second, all the install guides or assistance pertaining to booting Gentoo from their LiveDVD I found online in forums did not correspond with what was going on when running this particular DVD. In particular I was supposed to install via the GTK installer that was supposed to be right on the desktop at boot but it isn't which really complicated things. It basically left me back to only having a terminal to use as initially.

I discovered Toorox in the Linuxtracker.org database. I looked into it and found it is based on Gentoo as I would like, however it starts up booting as KNOPPIX. Seems to me this might assist with the tricky Gentoo installation issues I'm having. I have used KNOPPIX and know how great it can be. Also, Toorox 8.0 comes with an XFCE interface which assists in furthering the speed of your computer if it has old hardware and really super fast speeds for computers with new hardware. It's very appealing sounding!

Thank you for advising me about which distros are the best for a newbie to use. And if KNOPPIX doesn't come through for me this time around, it will probably be Slack or Fedora I go with.

Thanks Tobi,

I do agree with you about the educational aspect. Well, I will keep this thread posted once I find out how it all works out. I am going to post something in another forum about having my laptop lose Windows and what harm that might cause, if any. I just know that Knoppix can get you up and booting after a failure. Thanks.

I have no Windows at home (desktop with TinyCoreLinux and Laptop with Ubuntu) and due to the fact my children (6..8..11) are bringing regularly games ideas home (Moorhuhn Winter Edition etc.), it would be great for having Windows and playing them (I have regularly problems with WINE).
For me, this would be the only reason for having Windows: making playing my children.
So, next time, when I will buy a PC with CDROM, I will install Windows in parallel to Linux. Perhaps a second hand Window license for
making playing children.
The mature and adults will use linux...;-).
My recommendation: keep your windows for testing/playing purpose (this is not a sign of less morality to have it..).

Live cd's are a way to decide how close your system is in the stock distro.

Hi, just to follow up here on this post. I chose the new PCLinuxOS LXDE for installing as my primary partion and completely erased Windows 7 too and I am please to report this is an excellent OS for my Toshiba Satellite as it has had no compatability issues whatsoever. I am really relieve and thanks to the software team for their work!