New Linux Install
 

Hi all,

I've decided to try Linux out and I'm seeking advice on how to set it up in the best way. I have very little previous experience with Linux, but I know my way around computers in general fairly well. I've read some of the other newbie posts and picked up one or two things, but felt I wanted to write a post of my own to get some feedback on the following scenario.

My current system specs:
XP2500+ Barton Core
ASUS A7N8X-X nForce2 400
GeForce4 Ti4200
256Mb PC3200 DDR RAM
512Mb PC2700 DDR RAM
SBLive!
80 GB HDD
20 GB HDD

I've decided it's about time to clean out my harddrives to sort out all the crap I have on them. I'm gonna wipe out both drives with Killdisk and then fdisk/format as approptiate. I'm thinking of making my 80 GB drive my Windows XP drive and then installing Linux (right now I'm set for the Mandrake 10 distro) on the 20 GB drive. I'm going to have my 80 GB be entirely NFTS and let Linux have a full 20 GB of its own filesystem.

A few questions:

1. Which one to install first? XP?
-- What to think about when you install the second OS.
2. How well does Mandrake handle reading from NFTS?
3. How is booting to a specific OS handled?
4. Is it difficult to "uninstall" a certain distro if you'd like to try out another?
--- Run several distros side by side? Performance issues?

That's all I can think of right now. Help is much appreciated! :D

1. install XP first...windows is a greedy little brat that likes to go first. then install your linux distro.

3. it's handled pretty easily with a boot loader like grub or lilo, both of which i believe come with mandrake...you set those up when you're installing mandrake.

4. you can either uninstall it, or just install a new distro over it. you can also run several distros side by side...i run 98se, XP, suse and slackware side by side.

2 - Yeah, linux can read NTFS, but only partially supports wrting to NTFS.

(i assume thats what u meant when you said NFTS)

If I was you, I'd take that 20 GB hard disk and make 3 partitions on it: 10 GB NTFS, 9.7 GB ReiserFS and the space left for Linux Swap. Install Windows on the NTFS, and Linux on the ReiserFS.

I'd then take the 80 GB harddrive and make it as FAT32, so both Linux and Windows could use that harddrive for reading and writing. eg: you could put all your games, music, videos and etc on that one...

10 GB for each OS is more then enough for all the useful stuff, as p2p, Office, etc..

but hey, that's just me :)

Thanks for all the input. :)

Partially supports writing to NTFS? How/when/what??

I think I'm still going to stick with my plan. FAT32 just feels like a step in the wrong direction, I've been really happy with NTFS ever since the switch.

I have a similar set up as you. I have 1 20gb and 1 80gb. Had XP on the whole thing for a couple years and decided to start to move to Linux. I have XP installed on the 20gb (has been for quite some time), and I repartioned the 80 using partition magic. I lift 40gb as NTFS for winders, made 20gb for Linux, and 20gb as FAT32 as a share drive. Everything is going great. I think eventully I am going to start marging more and more of the 40gb NTFS into Linux and wipe out XP eventually alltogether.

Allthough with 2 blank discs, Megamans suggestion doesnt sound that bad.

The only problem with my Fat32 partion is that when I reboot Linux I have to manually mount it, and im sure theres a simple solution that I havnt found yet. No other problems. BTW, im using Mandrake 10.

Hey mate, thanks ;). About your problem mounting the partition, that's easily fixable by adding a few lines to your /etc/fstab. Here is an example:

That should mount your first slice (hda1) into /win98 (assuming you have a /win98 folder, otherwise create any you like, as /mnt/win_c... whatever) with full read/write permissions on boot.

Good luck!

I cant remember the exact line, but I know it needs to go into your /etc/fstab

<EDIT>
Found it here

the line is this:
your /dev/hda1 and /mnt/windows may be different
</EDIT>

<EDIT AGAIN>
Ya Got me Megaman
LOL - I was an illiterate anyway and though he was mounting NTFS
</EDIT>

I've decided to install Mandrake AND Red Hat Enterprise... before I go ahead and install I'd like to ask a question however. Should I create separate partitions for each distro? Does it matter? What's the usual way to go about multiple distro installs?

Thanks :)

yeah it depends on how lazy you are....

if your lazy, then year, different partiton for each distro...

if you are not lazy, then have all your distro's have there own /usr and /lib and /bin and /sbin partitons... but share things like /etc/ and /home/ .. u know....

but personally, i dont see why you would like more than one distro.