Lookin to setup a XP/Linux dual OS machine... some questions

[neoteric lefty]

I am looking to use a linux/XP machine for my home. XP for games and certain apps and Linux for everything else.

What order should I go about installing the OSes? I plan to have each OS on a seperate physical drive.

Is there a way to create a dual boot selection menu upon startup with this configuration?

Which version of Linux should I go with?

any other tips would be great...

[Deja Q]

1. SuSE 9.2

Personal or Pro, both have quaint formatting utilities that will give you a dual-boot solution.

[salvorhardin]

4. I agree

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I used to be a diehard Debian fan but I've had a lot of trouble installing Debian on newer hardware (probably just me). I tried a whole bunch of different distributions and was simply floored at how easy SuSE is. Easier than Windows easy.

That being said, there are a couple of caveats primarily having to do with multimedia. SuSE, for licensing reasons, does not ship with things like Microsoft or other proprietary video codecs. Easily installed RPMs are available though from PackMan: http://packman.links2linux.org

Oh, and install Windows first. Don't install anything other than Windows. Install SuSE second. It will pretty much take care of everything else.

There is one thing that bugs me about SuSE and that is that YaST (SuSE's graphical Control Panel + Add/Remove Programs tool) is slow, but very useable. I have no doubt YaST will continue to improve.

[DBoon]

2. I' doing this from memory

But as I recall I put Windows on first. I partitioned the drive so I had a C: drive and another rive that was unallocated.

I loaded my *nix onto the unallocated rive. It was a BSD, but same principle as with Linux. I booted off the install disk.

You have some choices for dual boot:

1. The hard way. Go into you bios prompt and change the active drive each time you want to change the OS. A pain, but requires no additional configuration. OK if you only use one OS rarely.

2. Use Windows boot.ini to bring up a boot menu

3. Use Linux LILO or Grub

4. Use a third party product.

Its not as hard as it sounds. One thing I found - never, ever use Windows utilities to view the *nix drive.

[IronLionZion]

3. excellent questions

I did XP first then used partition magic to create another partition. My distro was Red Hat 9 but since they are the "Microsoft of Linux" I'll be switching to something new.

check this link out
http://distrowatch.com/

I've heard good things about: Mandrake, Suse(now owned by Novell), Fedora(Red Hat), Debian, GnuLinux, Slackware, and FreeBSD(BSD, not Linux)

So look at the descriptions on distrowatch and decide what you need. If you want everything, then Debian is for you. If you are a major geek or want to torture yourself, try slackware.

cheers
ILZ

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

5. Set up XP first

Linux will install grub, which is a boot controller that recognizes the presence of Windows. If you install Suse linux second, it will also recognize your Windows XP NTFS partitions and be able to mount them.

I just did a Suse Pro 9.2 install just a couple hours ago. The only things wrong are it doesn't seem to like the sound card too much, and as in all Linux distros, it won't play DVD movies (no linux codecs exist at this time). The sound card I can probably adjust. I'm SOL on the DVD problem at this time, however.

On edit: It's Red Hat Linux (and several other distros) that installs grub- it will recognize Windows and you can configure your default bootup OS. Suse uses a different boot loader, but it too can be configured. Not sure if its core is grub or not.

[salvorhardin]

7. Linux and DVDs

Search for libdvd on Packman. :-)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

6. I introduced Linux after Windows and all worked well.