My friend was kinda thinking about having Linux run along with Windows. I think I kinda scared him away from the idea when I said he had to partition his harddrive and then edit GRUB.

He's tried Linux once (RH9), thought it was okay. He liked Tux race because it was the first 3d game that ran smoothly or something like that.

I'm trying to convince him to go along with his plan. The thing is firstly, he doesn't know how to partition his Win2k, which is on an NTFS. Secondly, he thinks it might be too difficult. He's not computer illiterate in any way, just thought I'd throw that in there.

So I want a post that will show him how to do all of this. The first thing you gotta tell him though, is that it's not that hard (I'm gonna give the link of this thread to him). You don't have to lie though, just reassure him.

Next, provide a detailed process on how to do all of this. He doesn't want to uninstall Win2k either.

I told him he might want to get another hard drive for Linux, but that idea didn't fly too well with him.

Well If he doesn't want to uninstall windows then he is going to have to get a program that can partition a harddrive on the fly. I've never had any major problems with Partition Magic, however it is not a free program (but if you have a lacking of moral fortitude I'm sure you can find it). Now assuming you got it just resize your windows partition so you have some unallocated space.

Now for the fun part - choose a distro. Although Fedora is by no means my favorite distro I suggest you go with that as it has a very easy to use graphical installer (Anaconda) and its default bootloader is Grub (it will even set up grub so that it reconizes windows for you). Once you've downloaded the necessary .iso files burn each one to its own CD by going to your favorite CD burning program and selecting Burn Image (don't just burn the .iso onto the CD like you would a normal file)

Now boot to the first CD and follow the instructions (they are pretty straight forward). When you are asked about partitions choose Automatic Partitioning then choose Keep all partitions and use existing free space. Also when setting up Grub make sure you tell it about windows. If for some reason you don't have an option to boot to windows when you reboot after the installation, go into linux and make sure the following is in your /boot/menu.lst file
where X is the harddisk number and Y is the partition number (both starting at 0) of your windows partition (Ex (hd0,0) is first harddisk first partition ie. /dev/hda1). But don't worry it probably won't come to that.

One final remark: there is a bug in Fedora Core 2 that makes it not play nicely with windows. Its easy to work around but its solved in 3 and 4 so might as well get one of those.

SUSE 9.3...and the soon to be released 10.0 will be supported for 2 years each, longer than Fedora. Also, Ubuntu 5.10 is about to be released, which is looking pretty nice and pretty damn easy to use. It now has a program for installing applications that is easier than Linspire's Click N Run. Even more polished too.

Ha. Ha. Ha. I remember that. FC2 was my first distro. It changes the drive geometry so windoze refuses to boot. That was..... an experience. However I do believe they fixed it in FC3/4, but by the time I moved onto FC3 I had a seperate Harddrive for linux, and when I moved to Gentoo I dropped windoze completely.

I have myself been trying to learn Linux now for a little over a year and one thing I can say for it is.... I do really enjoy it and it is fantastic... You can expect it to take time to find a distro that you really get on with and enjoy but thats the same as anything all you need to do is put in a little time and effort. I still rate myself as very new to linux even now when I have been using it everday for over a year.

Anyway my point here is this if your friend really wants to learn it I think he/she will really enjoy it and I think not being a windowz guru will help. All I would reccomend is do a lot of google-ing first and finally if possible put Linux on a separate drive (that will be a big plus and I am sure he/she will find out why later) )

Please advise your friend to make a backup of the important data on the HD before partitioning the HD. He would not be the first one where the re-partitioning fails for whatever reason and data will be lost.

All good advice. Especially the part about starting out w/ a 2nd drive, backing up important data, & the /boot/grub/menu.lst line:
One thing, if you/s/he do decide on a single drive install, make sure to defrag any NTFS partition immediately before re-sizing. BTW, defrag needs chkdsk /f, which in turn could use a thorough file clean up. In other words, in preparation for re-sizing, the following steps are recommended:[list=1][*]Clean up / eliminate unnecessary & duplicate files.[*]Run "chkdsk /f".[*]Run "defrag".[/list=1] Failure to do the defrag can result in a trashed NTFS file system.


Some personal preferences:

• SimplyMEPIS
• Acronis Partition Expert over PartitionMagic, if you can't get QTParted to do the job.
• KDE

One thing no one mentioned is the importance of the choice of Desktop Environment:

• KDE
• Gnome
• almost -- a "lightweight" window manger that uses X but falls short of a real "Winders-like" experience
• none -- pure CLI

i would say you sohuld use suse 9.3 or << or 10 which is not out yet>>

in my opinoin suse has just as an eays of an installer, and runs smoothly and stable.

i have not had any problems with that distro , plus i is also would be helpful for a person who isnt familer with all the linux commands... (using Yast).

Good Luck

Thanks for the distro suggestions, but no thanks...

I made him take a test to see which distro was suited for him. Before the test he was already thinking about fedora. The test (or tests rather), re-enforced his thoughts. I know these tests aren't going to tell what is absolutely best for you, cuz you kinda have to find that out on your own, but they're somewhat accurate.

cool, this was really good, hope this helps him.

The likely hood that someone helpful seeing this is a slim chance to none. So I decided instead of editing my post, I'd double post. I'll say sorry in advance.

He wants to know how to use SuperQuest PartitionMagic 8.0. He saw a "install another operating system" button or something and was going to use it. I don't know how to use it, so we agreed that it may not be the best idea to push that button. I told him Windows may have scattered data all over the hd, so if he partitioned it, some of the data would be lost.

I asked him for some screenshots, and these were what he had:
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/9...eenshot5lu.jpg
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/1...enshot28ky.jpg

Actually, now that I can see the tools at his disposal, I might be able to solve this. Would it be:

1. backup partition
2. redistribute free space
3. resize partition
4. finish (fedora will automatically partition free space)

Can someone confirm if those are the right steps or not? If they that would cause any harm to the current Windows installation, can someon post the steps that would not mess up the installation?

bump

At LQ "double posting" seems to mean starting 2 (or more) threads with the same post in different forum areas. That's not what you seem to have done -- no need to apologize.

Sorry, can't help there -- I don't install Win based partitioning tools, & the boot interface of PM 8 is abominable compared to that of Acronis. (Ergo my preference expressed above.)

When I do / assist with an install, I use my bootable Acronis disk to do the partitioning -- nice interface, no piracy, no "DOS mode" reboot.

Once it's installed it's pretty nice looking. Should work fine here. (In spite of my preferences/predjudices. )

I think you need to reverse steps 2 & 3. As long as step 1 is accomplished, I think you are quite safe.

Thanks for the replies, I'll send this link to him once he gets online!

Ok, I have the operations ready to go (I just need to click the Apply button then restart).

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9893/screen36fd.jpg

Does that all look right (and look safe)? And I have the "Primary" and "Logical" stuff right, right? Then it should boot back up into Windows with no noticable difference other than less free space available to Windows?

Before my friend dual boots he wants to make it absolutely certain that when he resizes the Windows partition, he won't lose any data, and Windows will still be able to boot. Don't need to tell him about editing grub or lilo, just reassure him that he won't loose data, and after he edits grub or lilo (most likely grub), Windows will still be able to boot.