Linux users please step in.

Ok,
I figured i would experiement with linux a bit. I did a little reading, and have found that there are many versions out there. Infact i got lost, in choosing the right one.

Here is what i want to do.
I have a 500mhz Cele, with 2 HDDs. One is a 4gig, the other a 10gig. I want to create a dual boot system, with Windows on the 10, and Linux on the 4.

First queston: Is it possible to have the OSs on two differnt HDDs, or do i need to put them both on differnt partitions on the same drive?

Second: Which linux do i use? I have seen many versions for many differnt things. Is there like a simple starting version? BTW i have a dsl connection so i can download the files, rather then getting a disk.

Any help on getting me started would be great. I figured this would make a good last project for me before school starts up.

Thanks



cooked

 

a switch 'DINGY'? com'on man. get with it.

1. if your bios supports booting to both ide channels, i don't see why you wouldn't be able to boot to either. when I dual booted XP and Red Hat, I installed XP first and the Red Hat and used the grub (linux) boot loader instead of the Windows boot loader.

2. save yourself the trouble of dual booting and try a bootable distro like Knoppix http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html. Download the .iso, use your burning software to burn that image to a cd, and boot to the cd. Everything you need to learn linux is on that cd. If you end up liking it, then try dual booting SuSE or Mandrake.

 

Thanks guys.

Ill give it a try later today when windows is done loading.



cooked

 

I have 2 HD's. First is 120G and has Win XP Pro and the 2nd is 60G and has Mandrake 10 on that. I dual boot using LILO and haven't encountered any problems.


As acejones said, Windows first then install Linux

 

Thanks for the information Ace! I downloaded KNOPPIX, It was in a RAR archive, so i extracted the files to a new folder. I then used nero to burn everything that was in the archive on to a disk. For some reason my computer wont boot from it. Was i susposed to not extract the files from the RAR, and just burn the RAR onto the disk?

BTW CD-Rom is the first thing to boot in the bios.



cooked

 

Dont know about knoppix not booting, CD might be bad. The best first Distro IMO is Mandrake 10, very simle and easy to use and comes with lots of features. 3 Discs of Software. SuSE is a great Distro but with 9.1 if you want to do anything good youll have to download a compiler and all sorts of stuff the install is only one disc. If you made your windows partition NTFS id make a small fat32 Partition a few gigs in size so that you can transfer files back to windows, Linux can see your Windows partition but writing to NTFS ive heard is still in the works and Windows wont see Linux Partitions.

Ive had some trouble with Knoppix that I did not have with the SuSE LiveCD. Try that if Knoppix doesnt work.

 

Thanks Wookie

I am going to try to burn the disc again. If it doesnt work, ill give mandrake, or suse a try.

Thanks



cooked

 

I'm trying to get suse to work right now, having a bit of an installation error. You can download it from www.linuxiso.org. Its really easy to download it from there.

 

what should have been downloaded was the .iso. then use nero to burn the .iso to a disk.

ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mirrors/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-17-EN.iso

i couldn't get Knoppix to boot either. So, I hit F2 when prompted and typed expert26 and it booted just fine. expert26 is so you can choose what loads (i had a scsi error...even though i don't have any scsi devices on the laptop i was using)

 

I just purchased a ready made CD of Knoppix since I was new to it myself. It was only like $5 shipped. Here is where I purchased mine (as well as some detail as to what is on the CD):

http://xplinux.biz/shop/product_info.php/products_id/36

 

Are the Mandrake 10 ISO's free?

I am sick of Red Hat, want to try something different. Is SuSe free? Which is better?

 

try mandrake. its beginner friendly and free (as are the other distro's). he paid so he didn't have to download it.

 

Yeah, I tried downloading the ISO and burning it but was not having luck. I decided to pay the 5 bucks to have someone else burn it for me and ship it to me. Otherwise, they are almost all free. They are all different flavors, you may end up trying a few before you find one you like.

 

Most Distro's are free and you get can them right off the companies websites.

But as stated above http://www.linuxiso.org/ has a bunch of links to differnet distros and downloads. For the easiest out of the box install Id recommend Mandrake. Comes with thousands of programs and weighs in at 3 CD's. SuSE is free but is kind of stripped down. If you want to compile anything youll need to download about 14 different programs that all need dependencies. I cant actually set up an FTP with just the RPM'S you need if you decide to go with SUSE. If your new id also recommend Mandrake because it comes with Gnome, KDE, ICEWm and theWM. You can explore whant you like best. SuSE only comes with KDE, you need to download any others.

 

I had that problem when downloading and burning ISOs of Mandrake 10 (which is free to answer someone else's question) -A simple fix is to go into WinRAR's Options>Integration and de-select the ISO option. -Then go back to Nero and select the ISO to burn again -note: at this point it should no longer have the WinRAR icon preceding the name of the file.
Hope that helped,
522.