Hello all, and thanks for reading....

First off, I have to go buy another motherboard, since the one I have has the dreaded Phoenix Trusted Bios that I cannot disable!!! ARGH! With this crap-o-la, I cannot boot anything but Windows XP, believe me, I tried MANY cd's....thought they were all burned badly until I found this out...ugh.


Anyhow.....I will do a nice fresh install of XP (wife still wants it, as Linux may not have the apps and etc that she needs....I am still Very new to Linux, so not know my way around, but I love it!).

When I have XP on there, I will use Partition Magic to create another partition for Linux, yes? Give it around 25GB, and I guess that I am supposed to do another partition for 512MB for a swap (I have 512MB RAM)?

Then a boot loaded should install itself when I install Ubuntu?

Will all this be automated when I install Ubuntu?

Any helpful hints or tricks to look out for?

ANy help would be greatly appreciated.

I manage to get Ubuntu set up on another pc, but it did away with WinXP all together...whooops!!! Oh well, I did get Compiz working with the 3-D rotating Cube Desktops and Skydomes, etc.......Wheeeeee!!!

Thanks,
Brian.

That's reasonable.

Ubuntu will offer you the choice of doing this manually or letting Ubuntu handle it automagically. Since you will have already set up the partitions I suggest that you go into Ubuntu's manual partition and tell it to do it your way. The Ubuntu grub setup will probably be OK unless you have some reason to do things differently.

With 25G I would set up two Linux partitions and 1 swap. Most people end up trying several Linux distributions before they settle on a favorite. If you have a spare Linux partition it makes installing other distributions much easier. No matter how many Linux partitions you have installed you only need 1 swap partition.




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Steve Stites

Look, I do not have such a @#$/%^ hardware so I cannot tell you for sure but there may be a way to keep this motherboard. You can use Windows ntloader to boot Linux and there are ways to install Linux from Windows.

Hi,

Which motherboard are you buying? Be sure to check out the specifications. Which processor?

Mot trusted BIOS systems are corporate use for enterprise wide systems. That way no one is going to bung the systems.


You could use a LiveCD with qparted on it to create your partitions or use the LiveCD GParted .

You should create your partitions then load your M$ XP first. You should be given the option to install to the partition of choice. As for your swap partition, HDD space is cheap and I would increase the swap to 1024MB. That would be twice your RAM and you probably won't swap that much but when needed it would be there. This will depend on what you plan on using the system for. If you do a lot video edit or large file work then swap may be used.

You must have allowed the install over the XP or no partition space for a new install.

Hi,
Not with a trusted BIOS machine.

Thanks for correction. I was thinking trusted BIOS won't boot if MBR is altered and that's it. So it is not that simple?

Hi,

This is dated but you can get the idea. Phoenix, Award and others have delved into the Trust BIOS arena. Corporate admins like the idea but IT don't always stand behind them. There are ways to prevent changing of workstations, diskless for one.

Great advice everyone.....thank you!!
Brian.

Thanks for the info onebuck!

That article was in 2003. Luckily not all computer companies have adopted the Phoenix bios.

Had I know that, I would have been more careful in buying a computer for my kids this last Christmas.

I just bought a Dell for my kids which works fine with dual boot.

Hi,

It's not just Phoenix that has delved into the Trusted BIOS. Some call them extensions. As I stated the article is dated but still informative.