Because I am very much a newbie to any flavor of Linux I acquired Linspire, Mepis (with the book "Point and Click Linux") and Ubuntu to see which I preferred.

Linspire is too restrictive for me. I dislike being locked in, for a charge, to a particular system. Compared to the other two it comes with a minimum amount of software.

Except for not being able to access all of my information, if I were running only Linux I could probably be happy with Ubuntu. I have 15+ years under my belt with DOS and Windows systems and am not afraid to experiment. But I'm no programmer by any means.

Of the three only Mepis gives me immediate and easy access to both of my hard drives. Were it not for Mepis I would have lost ALL of the information on my big (160 gig) drive. Thanks to Mepis listing all my partitions, and with the built-in CD burner I was able to back up the drive before I had to reformat it.

Both Linspire and Ubuntu dual boot with no problem, but Mepis rufuses to dual boot with Windows 2000 Pro. I've tried it both on my small (40 gig) hard drive and on a partition on the big drive. It loads beautifully, including GRUB, but only boots to Mepis with no option to boot to Windows.

With Ubuntu and Linspire it may be possible to see partitions other than the ones they are loaded on but I could not find a way to do it.

So Mepis, if I can get it to dual boot with Win2K, will be my Linux of choice.

well you might wanna consider upgrading your version first, the version that came with the book is almost a year and a half old and was rushed to meet publication deadlines, then after you do that and have mepis installed show us your /boot/grub/menu.lst file

Thank you!

I will try that.

I have had pretty good success dual-booting with XP using this method (except with Ubuntu and Suse). Instead of using QParted, I use Partition Magic to create a Linux partition and then install Mepis into there. I feel more comfortable using a Windows program to resize a Windows partition. I install GRUB into MBR and Mepis and XP get along pretty good.

Thanks Mitch.

Because I have two hard drives I would like to dedicate the smaller one to Mepis and still dual boot. Is this possible?

P.S. I just ordered the new Mepis CD. Should have it in two or three days.

I know there is a way to do it but I do not know how. It involves modifying your GRUB if I remember correctly. Maybe someone that knows this method can shed light on this subject.

I have two hard drives too, but I installed XP and Mepis on the first one (40MB each) and on the second one I made three partitions-- one a Ghost backup for XP, one to back up My Docs from XP (this is backed up more regularly than the whole system), and a FAT32 XP/Linux "share" plus Home backup partition.

BTW, when I first installed Mepis I only allocated 10MB of my first hard drive to it. Over time and mulitple installs it has grown larger and larger. One of these days it will push XP off the HD, lol.

Try this thread on MepisLovers--link

go down to the last post by mhl and read it.

Mmmm - wonder if there is an issue here. I've been in another thread where Mepis wouldn't install as hoped in a dual disk environment.
Grub is not the problem - if there is an issue it is with the Mepis installer.
If Mepis installs to the second disk, and installs grub to the MBR (of the current XP disk), there is no need swap the boot order in the BIOS nor use the "map" directives in the grub conf. Something like the following added to menu.lst should sufffice;You might need (hd0,1) if you have a manufacturers "recovery" partition on the Windows drive.

I have only installed Mepis on a single drive box, built for the purpose. I hate GUI installers with a passion and wouldn't allow one on my normal PC's. I have a need to build another test box, so I might try a Mepis install like the above to see what it does.

Mepis, Kubuntu, use whatever works for you. They are more similarities than differences when you actually use them. Both have all the packages that most people wil need. Ubuntu is definitely more cutting edge if that is what you are after including many packages that haven't made it into debian Sid yet.

I think that over time, people that have cut their linux teeth with either Ubuntu or Mepis will gradually migrate over to pure debian. Once you get the hang of it, configuring debian is not that difficult but it is quite a jump for most newbies. If you can afford a couple of gigs of hd space, a parallel install of either Mepis or Ubuntu and a small "learning" partition for debian is a good way to learn. If you get stuck on configuring something, you can always find the comparable script/.conf file in Mepis and see how it is done.

Sounds interesting, and I certainly have the drive space.

As I said earlier, I chose Mepis because it easily accessed ALL of my partitions on both drives, and allowed to me to back them up, saving me hours of grief and tears.

Later this afternoon I'll be trying syg00's suggestion for getting Mepis to dual boot.

Thanks much for all your help.

A huge THANKS! for the bit of code. It did not run as written the first time I tried it, but I may not have typed it correctly. I reloaded Ubuntu and looked at the file there and it said "Windows 2000 Professional." So I went back to Mepis and typed it in that way.

Now all I need is a proper modem and I'm off and running!

Worked a charm!

Again, many thanks!

Enjoy!

Happy to help - if only all problems were that easy to resolve.
Maybe you should report the install issue back to Mepis.

As for the modem, been many years since I last dialled up, but I can't believe Mepis doesn't have that covered.
It found my PCI WiFi card without any input from me.

I'm not worried about finding a modem. From what others have said it's not all that hard. I just have to get off my behinder and do it.

I'm glad I had a bit of experience with DOS batch files years ago. I think it helped me with this.

My big problem was not knowing where to look for the files.

You've probably not seen the last of me now that I'm up and running. I tend to ask lots of questions.

Enjoy!

It does actually, but many modems just arent compatable with linux, these are called winmodems, MEPIS provides ndiswrapper for those but it can be hit and miss with ndis...

I understand about winmodems not working with Linux. I've done some research and all I have to do is get off my behinder and order one that does work with Linux.

Thanks so much for your help.