My apologies to all in advance if this has already been answered elsewhere:

If I install Linux OS on separate disk will all the plug-and-pray hardware which previously worked fine with Windoze XP Pro also work with Linux?

Is there a hard disk size limit with Linux? I would like to use a 10GB for OS, a 80GB for documents, and a 400GB for MP3 files. Any thoughts on this?

TIA

Lou

short answer: maybe -- most hardware works fine, but there are still some with problems, depending on the device. you can take a look at the HCL here at LQ, or check sites like linuxcompatible.org or linuxhardware.org etc. which devices are you talking about?

on drives, not sure if there's a limit, but the 10 and 80 gig sizes are definitely fine with modern distros. also, there may be an extra step or two to do if the drives are SATA, depending on which distro you use...

Choose Mandrake Linux since its easy to use and once you are familiar with the linux OS, you can shift to whatever distros you would like to. I used Debian (I should say I only installed Debian previously and successfully, but then couldnt make use of it as I had the display problem with the Intel Graphics at that time(2 years back), and then moved to Mandrake 10.0 and working fine.

Speaking of the hardware, printer, usb port, CD/DVD read/write, multimedia, etc should work fine I am not sure whether bluetooth feature for these hardware is available in Linux.

If you haven't chosen your OS yet, and want the option of still having XP to fall back on "just in case", I recommend a distro like Mandrake/Mandriva. It will sector your hard drive for you and set up dual-boot so you don't "lose" Windows.

Another advantage to dual-booting: you can "reach around" into the Windows sector and pull out fonts and data files without having to go out to the Net. Very helpful if you're experimenting with WINE, which can use Windows DLL's if they're available. WINE (the initials stand for "WINE Is Not an Emulator") allows you to run some Windows programs in Linux.

I'm sure there are other distros out there that do the same thing as Mandriva, I just aren't aware of WHICH ones.

Regarding disk sizes: No, for the home user there's no such issue with disk sizes as there is with WIndows.

As this is already turning into a "Install this distro" thread, I'll try to steer it back on course:


No worries, it's a good question.

Quote:

If I install Linux OS on separate disk will all the plug-and-pray hardware which previously worked fine with Windoze XP Pro also work with Linux?

This is a wide open question. If I buy a brand new 2005 Honda Civic, can I throw in a 1968 Chevrolet 327? Uh, yeah, you can. But, you may run into problems. Maybe not all your things will work, but some probably will. Try it, play with it, see what works and what needs 'tweaking' or just straight up doesn't work.
The slightly easier answer is to check the LinuxQuestions.org HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) to see if your hardware is listed, and what state it's in.

Quote:

Is there a hard disk size limit with Linux? I would like to use a 10GB for OS, a 80GB for documents, and a 400GB for MP3 files. Any thoughts on this? TIA Lou

Yes there is a hard disk limit, but those numbers are nowhere near them. I believe that ext3 is somewhere in the terabytes; xfs is somewhere in the Pentabytes, but I could be mistaken. Either way, it's VERY unlikely you'll reach that, and by the time modern technology in the home comes remotely close, I'm sure the limit will be changed far beyond the current ones.

400GB for MP3's? Seems like quite the addiction to me Maybe you could use an ID3 tagging tool to ensure you don't have duplicated hogging, oh, maybe 300GB...

Cool

if you format the partition with reiserfs the maximum size is 16TB