Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum and thought I'd introduce myself as well as ask a pertinent question or two. I'm Sadie, so called because I've been married a year so that makes me "Sadie, Sadie married lady" as my Dad calls me. =) About two years ago or so I managed to successfully install and create a dual boot Redhat 5.2/Windows 98 machine, but then got stuck trying to determine what software I had installed (if any) and how to access it successfully. I also had an issue with only having a winmodem and not being able to access the internet through Linux (a must!).

Now I'm back because my interest in Linux hasn't waned, it's peaked again! I've got a new machine, but it has Windows XP on it, and I have two questions about that:

1) Is it possible to successfully create a dual boot for a Windows XP machine? and;

2) Does linux have support for Road Runner (cable modem)?

I need to retain Win XP, and I'd love to try to install a newer version (maybe non-Redhat) on my system if I can keep my existing internet connection.

Thanks in advance, and kudos to whoever thought this up! Two years ago I was dying to find a mentor who'd teach me what I need to know to be effective with Linux. Now, it seems there are hundreds. =)

I suppose, since nobody has responded to my post, and yet there have been others with response, that a clarification is probably in order.

1) If a dual boot with Windows XP and Linux is possible, how stable is it, and which distribution is most compatible?

2) Is there support for cable modem under any version of Linux, and if so, which one?

I'm trying to determine if it's worth my while to install linux on my current machine a 1.5 GHz Pentium with 128MB, Windows XP and Cable Modem. (I have an 80GB HD on this machine.)

I'm really new at this, so I'm not sure if I'm asking the right questions.

dual boot linux + winxp is possible, it should not affect
stability and any linux distribution will do. and there is
support for cable modem in all linux distros. and it's
always worth installing linux, on any system.

Thanks for the help! I was hoping that would be the case, but it was so disappointing to install Linux last time and then find that I couldn't get a modem to work.

Is there any particular distribution that's "better" than the others? Or is there a comparison somewhere so that I can judge for myself?

Thanks!

If your cable modem connects to an ethernet card in your PC then any recent linux distro will work, if it connects via USB then I strongly advise you to gat an ethernet card, usb cable modem connections can be made to work but it's just like getting a winmodem to work, ethernet just works.
Another think to watch for is if your XP install is using ntfs then you might need to use Partition Magic to create room on your hard drive for linux.
Finally, give mandrake linux a try.

That was a lot of answers! And I appreciate them all. I'll check out the mandrake tutorials and see if I can make sense of them. I believe that my cable modem uses ethernet, although it's plugged in through a router, which now that I'm thinking about it, may cause a problem.

As for Win XP - it is using NTFS. I suppose I'll have to get partition magic. Is it something freely available?

router shouldn't really give a problem. Well for me, it didn't. As long as it's using dhcp i think you will be fine.

Thanks for all the quick help everyone. I'm learning how to navigate the site via the search button, the only probelm I'm having is that when I put "Windows XP" in as a search parameter, it tells me that "XP" is too short - it needs to be three letters. Then it comes up dry.

At any rate, I'm learning, and hopefully quickly, how to use the site. Thanks for everything!

NTFS resize is only a month old or so, only MDK9.1beta has it. You could wait and see if Redhat and SuSE integrate it, or you could buy partition magic. I would not recommend you install a beta at this point

Mandrake is by far the easiest distro on new linux users.
Mandrake 9.1 final will be out in a month from now, NTFS support and all the specs you are looking for. They take pre-orders at mandrake-store.
For the time being give the beta (RC2) for a spin, but be aware that there are still several bugs to take care of, for a newbie not to easy to manage.

There have been a few issues with earlier distros and the NTFS file-system that XP uses. For info put NTFS in the search engine on this site (1110 hits)

A year or so ago I'd have agreed. I think lately though Redhat and SuSE have caught up in terms of ease of use in real terms.

Shoot.. so close and yet so far. Let me see if I'm understanding this right. I can either buy Partition Magic and use it to partition the NTFS drive so that Linux (Mandrake) can use a part of it, or I can wait for the new Mandrake release and then use that to partition? So it's either dish out the cash for instant gratification, or wait the month and dish out the cash then.

I'd heard that there were many free versions of Linux and had hoped that the utilities necessary to use it were free as well, but it seems that everything that I need or that's reccomended as being a good product is a pay-for product. *grumble* I'll have to do some more research, I guess. I don't know if I want to dish out the dollars until I'm sure I'll be able to use it. I'm not looking for something like Windoze - I've had enough of that. But I need something with a fairly quick learning curve that's highly configurable. It's times like this I miss DOS. *sigh*

Thanks again for the help!

Install a new harddrive ;-)

That shouldn't hurt or using the old '98 harddrive will be just fine.

Linux is very ecomomical indeed.

i know everyone hates this answer soooo much but i guess i will say it because its just so much fun. Windows takes like 18 seconds to install, and i bet there are like 20 files that you need to backup at most. So backup the files(ie burn them to a cd rom) and then reinstall windows. But first partition the hard drive to fit both OS's happily. Other than that.... you know you can buy a 4 gig hard drive for less than like $20 online. I hate to sound like one of those bitter gurus(which i am deffinately not) but 20 bucks is less than you'll spend on a movie with a date and some popcorn. Anyhow... I still have a tiny 900 meg windows partition on one of my boxes to test web pages and thats all. Im very glad i finally made the (pretty much) full switch. Its worth it. Other than that, ya you have to pay for software. But think about just backing up and reinstalling. By the way i would be more than happy to assist... drop me an email.

You can download most Linux distributions from the web in .iso format and then burn and install from there. As for buying a copy of Partition Magic... as much as I like free software, there are just some things I want to work right on the first try. I bought a copy and have been very happy with it. Developers need to eat too.

There is always... Kazaa.... but that's another issue all together.