Linux vs. XP: Sharing a partition
 

Right now, I have had XP on my C:/ partition for a couple years (an upgrade [flinches]). I also have two more hard drives.

What I want to do, is install a copy of linux and a copy of win98 on the same (C:/) partition.

-Will it work?
-Does XP have an OS chooser built in?
-What linux should I use?
-Are there any java based OSs I can get?
-Where are some instructions?

Welcome to LQ :)

There were a few distros that had the option to install Linux into a directory on an existing Fat32 partition, but I **think** for the most part those have faded out. Check out phatlinux and/or Old Mandrake (7.2 ish) from www.distrowatch.com for more info on that. Otherwise, it's really a 'no' you should create a smaller partition to install Linux into instead.

Does XP have an OS chooser built in? Yeah. Some people use that and have reported pretty good success, do a search on the boards for more info.

What Linux? Your choice ;) Whatever you feel like using, most newbies find Xandros, Mandrake, Redhat or SuSE to be a decent selection to choose from, but you are only limited by HD space, time, and what you can find from www.google.com/linux www.distrowatch.com www.linuxiso.org and of course this site and ANY distro homepages you can find (and other resources you may come upon as well ;) ).

Java Based distros... Not that I'm aware of. It's an entire OS, not a piece of software you are installing onto windoze, it's used **instead of** windoze. But you can use things like "live distros" which don't install ANYTHING onto your computer and just boot from a CD and run from the CD so you can get a feel for linux. www.knoppix.org is 1 of a few that offer this type of thing.

Instructions for what? ;) Check out a few links in my sig, also read the "linux 101" tutorial over at www.linux.org Most of your distro's homepages will have info on installing/getting started with the distro.

Good Luck!

Cool

It's very hard to have 2 OS's on the same partition, lets say, I don't have any idea how to do, and if it would be possible, I wouldn't recommend doing it. Why?
Win98 uses the FAT system, which is unable to store permissions on files, which must be possible when installing Linux. There is no reason to have users "Joe" and "root", if you can access all the files from Joe anyway - the whole security is gone. Nuff said.
Now what do you want do do? You have winXP on C, and want win98 AND Linux ALSO on C? Not possible. I would do the following: partition your first hd to have at least 2 partitions, if you have enough space, make more. Make smaller "system" partitions: C: for Win98 (fat, win98 must be installed in C), D: for WinXP (NTFS. Can be accessed read-only under Linux, no write support as of now), and then a Data partition (FAT, can be accessed from Win98, WinXP, Linux). Install Linux then somewhere else (on your second hd?)
The other questions:
-XP does have an OS chooser, but if you're using Linux, I would recommend using the Linux boot loaders (Grub or Lilo - all of which come with basically every distro). You can boot every OS from it.
-What Linux? Your choice. Find any "Which distro" thread and decide what you want. There is no such thing, a"best distro"
-Java based OS? Nope. Java is a programming language that requires a run-time environment for every specific OS it's running on. You can run a Java program on Linux, Win, Solaris, BSD etc, but there is no Java OS
-Instructions? Click that search button on the top-right. I'm sure you can find almost every answer to your question there.
Some useful links are: The Distro's homepage (which you want to use), www.tldp.org, www.linuxquestions.org :D... I can't think of another important one...
Good luck

Do you type this fast MasterC? Damn, I gotta be faster :D

Get ZipSlack if you want Linux and Win98 to share a partition. I'm almost certain it can't work with an NTFS partition but it does on a FAT like Win98 would have - umsdos is no ext3 or reiser but it's still a real Slack. A separate partition is a better solution; just unzipping Slack is an easier one. It's on the ftp servers under Slack 9. 'Bout a 90-100 meg zip file, I think.

Well, you're still faster than I am, Config. :)

:D I'm just lucky ;)

Cool

LOL :D