Installing Linux on Windows XP AMD 64 - Risks & Setup

[franznietzsche]

I'm currently running Windows XP on and AMD 64 with a 200 GB SATA hard drive.

I would like to install Linux on a 20 GB partition, leaving what i already have installed on the remaining 180 GB, leaving that untouched.

I have the install disks for Mandrake 10, but I'm not quite sure how to go about this. Any material I've found so far only addresses going from 98 or earlier.

I tried doing this before on an older laptop (20 GB IDE, Pent III, WIndows XP) and it worked mostly, i could not connect to the internet though.

My main concern are what risks am i facing if itry this, and how should i set up the directories on the linux partition? This is something i have not understood very well from what I've read.

Help is appreciated.

 

[graphic7]

Typical of Linux installs, I would create a / partition, a /home partition, and a /boot partition.

The point of the /home partition is if you ever do a reinstall, you'll only be modifying the / partition, therefore, your user (home) directories will be safe. As for the /boot, if you ever get brave enough to start doing kernel recompilations, the /boot partition is an added safeguard.

You should be able to partition the extra space and install Mandrake; Mandrake should detect the other Windows-based partititons you have. If this is not that case, Mandrake uses the GRUB bootloader (I believe), which is easy to configure for a Windows and Linux dualbooting.

Mandrake has a relatively point-and-click partititioning interface.

I'm not sure about what version of Mandrake you installed in the past, however, any Ethernet card (wireless, also) should be detected by Mandrake's hardware detection. If not, this is at most, a simple matter, and can be fixed relatively easily.

 

[dduardo]

Just install windows the way you like on the 180GB first, and then tell mandrake to install on whatever is left over(the unformatted section). You don't have to worry about paritioning with mandrake, unless of course you want some speical confiiguration. Like graphic7 said, mandrake has a relatively easy point-and-click interface.

 

[franznietzsche]

Well windows is already installed on the 200 is the thing. BUt I've only used about 12 of that.

 

[franznietzsche]

The only thing I'm worried about with windows reinstalled is losing my copy of Office 2003. Everything else is easily replaced, but being a college student away from home i don't have the install disk, or the product key, so losing that would be a real pain in the ass.

 

[dduardo]

If windows is taking up the whole drive then you'll need to resize the windows partition. Something like parition magic will do the trick.

 

[franznietzsche]

any recommedations on finding a program to do that that doesn't cost $70? I tried the free trial of partition magic but it would not apply any changes.

 

[Alex]

any recommedations on finding a program to do that that doesn't cost $70? I tried the free trial of partition magic but it would not apply any changes.

Well..you don't have to pay $70 for it (if you catch my drift). I mean after all, you're only using it this once, right? But regardless of whether you join the dark side, I would back up your work anyway, because it is possible to lose data when partitioning with or without partition magic.

 

[mattmns]

Also, I am not sure about how you are getting mandrake, but my fedora core dvd (came with a book) had openoffice and other packages on it. www.openoffice.org It is free, I think, and from what I have seen so far, it is roughly the same as ms office. It has word, powerpoint, excell. I have only used word though, so I am not sure about the others. It does seem like a decent equivlant though.

 

[franznietzsche]

Also, I am not sure about how you are getting mandrake, but my fedora core dvd (came with a book) had openoffice and other packages on it. www.openoffice.org It is free, I think, and from what I have seen so far, it is roughly the same as ms office. It has word, powerpoint, excell. I have only used word though, so I am not sure about the others. It does seem like a decent equivlant though.

I downloaded the isos for Mnadrake 10 a while back (five or six months ago) and burned them onto Cds, had them ever since.

However, in my readings over the past day i have not been hearing any good things about mandrake, but I've had trouble getting any definite info on which distro would be best.

I really only plan on using it for programmimg purposes really. Some web browsing obviously, but mostly just programming and related activities. I plan on retaining a windows partition for everything else. I'll need telnet and ftp clients (not like those are hard to find anyway though) as well. I chose Mandrake, because a friend told me it was easy to learn, but I've heard many bad things about it in the time since. Any advice on that front?

 

[graphic7]

I would recommend Fedora or SuSE, since your contemplating which distro is the best for you. Fedora and SuSE both have excellent management interfaces (especially, YaST in SuSE). Fedora and SuSE will both include tons of packages, usually a DVD or 4 CDs worth. Fedora is free, whereas for SuSE professional (a full DVD or CD collection of packages), expect to pay around $90.

In the midst of all the packages included for both distributions, you can expect the GNU Compiler Collection, as well as plenty of editors and IDEs. Mozilla and/or Firefox is included with them, of course. As for FTP clients, a terminal client is always included, as well as ncFTP, which is an excellent terminal FTP client. SSH and a telnet clients are standard with any Linux distribution.

I think Fedora is a relatively simple distribution. Everything is straight-forward, and tasks can usually be completed from graphical or curses-based applications.

 

[franznietzsche]

OK if i go with Fedora, should i get the most recent Core, which would be Core 3?

I appreciate patience, I'm Still new to the whole thing.

 

[gnome]

I have Mandrake 10 on one of my machines. (Actually, I have WinXP, Mandrake 10 and Gentoo on that machine.) I don't use it that often, but I think its safe to say that it's the easiest, or at least one of the easiest, linux distros to get up and running.

It sounds like you want to use it to have a unix-compatible environment for programming. It should be fine for that purpose.

I believe that the Mandrake installer includes a non-destructive disk reformatter SIMILAR to Partition Magic; it SUPPOSED to be able to resize and create partitions without harming your Window installation. But I don't know how reliable it is. Partition Magic is the safest way to go.

OpenOffice is good; I use it frequently. But it's not an item-for-item replacement for Microsoft Office.

If you can get a copy of Norton Ghost, the safe approach would be to make a Ghost image (on CD) of your Windows partition before you start. That way, even if the disk repartitioning ruins your Windows, you will be able to restore it AFTER repartitioning & not lose anything.

 

[graphic7]

OK if i go with Fedora, should i get the most recent Core, which would be Core 3?

I appreciate patience, I'm Still new to the whole thing.

Yes, Core 3 is the latest.

Also, Fedora is one of the more "professional" Linux distributions I've seen. All the interfaces are very sleek, and by this, I don't mean Windows XP sleek. Regardless, Fedora doesn't have that rough feel that I find many Linux distributions have.

If I were to use Linux, Fedora would be my first choice. When I did run Linux a few months ago, Fedora Core 2 could be found on one of my workstations; I was highly pleased at it (for a Linux distribution).

 

[franznietzsche]

I have Mandrake 10 on one of my machines. (Actually, I have WinXP, Mandrake 10 and Gentoo on that machine.) I don't use it that often, but I think its safe to say that it's the easiest, or at least one of the easiest, linux distros to get up and running.

It sounds like you want to use it to have a unix-compatible environment for programming. It should be fine for that purpose.

I believe that the Mandrake installer includes a non-destructive disk reformatter SIMILAR to Partition Magic; it SUPPOSED to be able to resize and create partitions without harming your Window installation. But I don't know how reliable it is. Partition Magic is the safest way to go.

OpenOffice is good; I use it frequently. But it's not an item-for-item replacement for Microsoft Office.

I had Mandrake 10 running on my old laptop for a short while, but it had a few problems, the built in resizer in the mandrake install would only give 2 GB for the whole linux partition, which would not install all the packages i wanted. Couldn't connect to the internet either. Of course i was on a wireless card at the time. That didn't upse my windows partition either.

What I've read recently on forums about mandrake and heard from a few others makes me paranoid though. Some one mentioned hard drive failures, and i don't want to pay for another 200 GB hard drive anytime too soon. Can't afford to really. Backing up my data is horrendously crucial, everything except my copy of windows office is immediately replaceable, just losing that would be a pain. I would abck everything up first, but i don't have any extra hard drives right now (ironically i do have one, but its 350 miles away, i hadn't thought i would need it.), and i don't have the cash (poor student) to spend $100 on one right now.

And yes I'm really just looking for a UNIX compatible programming platform. Another thing is apparently Intel has a FORTRAN compiler that is FORTRAN 90 compliant for linux, which apparently from what they're telling me, can be ahd for free for non commercial purposes. And obviously gcc comes with most linux distros which i would use as well.

 

[graphic7]

I had Mandrake 10 running on my old laptop for a short while, but it had a few problems, the built in resizer in the mandrake install would only give 2 GB for the whole linux partition, which would not install all the packages i wanted. Couldn't connect to the internet either. Of course i was on a wireless card at the time. That didn't upse my windows partition either.

What I've read recently on forums about mandrake and heard from a few others makes me paranoid though. Some one mentioned hard drive failures, and i don't want to pay for another 200 GB hard drive anytime too soon. Can't afford to really. Backing up my data is horrendously crucial, everything except my copy of windows office is immediately replaceable, just losing that would be a pain. I would abck everything up first, but i don't have any extra hard drives right now (ironically i do have one, but its 350 miles away, i hadn't thought i would need it.), and i don't have the cash (poor student) to spend $100 on one right now.

And yes I'm really just looking for a UNIX compatible programming platform. Another thing is apparently Intel has a FORTRAN compiler that is FORTRAN 90 compliant for linux, which apparently from what they're telling me, can be ahd for free for non commercial purposes. And obviously gcc comes with most linux distros which i would use as well.

Impressive. I had no idea Intel offered their compilers for free for non-commerical use. I wish Sun would do the same with Sun Studio.

 

[franznietzsche]

Impressive. I had no idea Intel offered their compilers for free for non-commerical use. I wish Sun would do the same with Sun Studio.

I didn't either, but i searched for a FORTRAN 90 compiler, wound up on their site and that's what it said.

I got the drive to partition safely, no problems with that(the risky part). Now just to install and get linux running.

I think i'll go with fedora core 3, any other recommendations?

 

[graphic7]

As I recall, Intel only offers their compilers in an RPM package install format. I could be wrong, but if this is true, then an RPM-based distribution like Fedora or SuSE will be your only choice. If you do choose to run, say a Debian-based package distribution, conversion utilities do exist to convert the RPM to the native package format, however, I would not put too much faith in those.

 

[mattmns]

I would say fedora 3 is fine, but I am a noob; however, this could be a good thing, because I use fedora 2, and if I can use it, you should have no problem. I only have one issue with fedora 2, and that is the dual install of it and windows xp. But, from what I have read, this is only a problem with the grub that comes with fedora 2. So, if you install fedora 3 then you will probably have no problem. When I went into one of the fedora irc channels, people recommended that if I wanted to use a dual boot with windows xp and fedora, then I should use fedora 3 instead of 2.

I hope that sounds clear, I am really tired, and am writing terribly.

 

[franznietzsche]

As I recall, Intel only offers their compilers in an RPM package install format. I could be wrong, but if this is true, then an RPM-based distribution like Fedora or SuSE will be your only choice. If you do choose to run, say a Debian-based package distribution, conversion utilities do exist to convert the RPM to the native package format, however, I would not put too much faith in those.

I'm dowloading the fedora isos right now so that's not an issue:

On a side note, the stanford mirror is great, I'm getting 1392 Kb/s on all four simultaneously. Yay for T1.

 

[franznietzsche]

I would say fedora 3 is fine, but I am a noob; however, this could be a good thing, because I use fedora 2, and if I can use it, you should have no problem. I only have one issue with fedora 2, and that is the dual install of it and windows xp. But, from what I have read, this is only a problem with the grub that comes with fedora 2. So, if you install fedora 3 then you will probably have no problem. When I went into one of the fedora irc channels, people recommended that if I wanted to use a dual boot with windows xp and fedora, then I should use fedora 3 instead of 2.

I hope that sounds clear, I am really tired, and am writing terribly.

Yes it does, and that is encouraging. Isos are almost done, should have them burned to discs shortly.

 

[gnome]

FWIW, Mandrake 10 installed for me in about 1/2 hour, & came up with everything working first time with no hassles: nvidia graphics & sound, alsasound, two onboard lan connections (10/100 and gigabit). But that's on a desktop. Notebooks are often more problematic.

Most of the time when I use Linux it's the Red Hat 9 on my old desktop. It's always been reliable & easy to use, so Fedora will probably work out well for you.

I have Debian on my notebook. I would NOT recommend that to anyone. It's been a pain in the ass & I'd love to ditch it. The only reason I haven't is that I don't have time to reinstall everything.

 

[graphic7]

I used Debian on a few servers in a production environment for about 4-5 months; I was not impressed. Usually after a few months of heavy package installing/removing, you'll end up with all sorts of package database inconsistencies. Especially, between releases you can expect things like this to occur. I've had pretty decent luck with RPM-based distributions. Years ago, RPMs were a pain because of insuring the dependencies were available, however, with 'yum' that's all changed for the most.

 

[mattmns]

Yes YUM! YUM was a lifesaver for me. Getting all those stupid deps, grr.

Here is a site that I found helpful, might be too beginner for you, but you never know. www.fedorafaq.org/

 

[franznietzsche]

Getting ready to install, but i want to know how the rest of you have your partitions setup.

Also, what is the purpose of the swap file?

I need a / directory for the OS, obviously, /home or /usr for working in, graphic7 suggested a /boot, I'm assuming a backup of the / directory. Anything else?

Also what sizes are your directories respectively?

 

[graphic7]

Getting ready to install, but i want to know how the rest of you have your partitions setup.

Also, what is the purpose of the swap file?

I need a / directory for the OS, obviously, /home or /usr for working in, graphic7 suggested a /boot, I'm assuming a backup of the / directory. Anything else?

Also what sizes are your directories respectively?

/usr should be the largest partition, next to /. /home should be whatever you think you need. /boot stores the bootloader configurations, as well as the kernel, itself (therefore, it shouldn't require hardly any space).

Given I had a 20gb for Fedora I would:

3gb - /home
10gb - /usr
6.5gb - /
500mb swap
50mb /boot

 

[gnome]

All my computers are set up to multi-boot. I keep Windows in a primary C partition and Linux (or Linuxes) in logicals in the extended partitition. The one that has RedHat9 which I use for personal, a little business, and schoolwork I guess is a good guide for your Fedora. It has a 100mb /boot partition, about 7.4gb root (/) partition (I keep /usr on the root partition), 800mb /home and about 530mb swap. There's no problem having additional logical partitions on that extended partition, to be used by Windows, linux, or both (or neither, such as for ghost (backup) images.

I'm only actually using about 60% of that 7.4gb, even with quite a few packages installed. I keep /home in a separate partition on the theory that it's convenient for backing up, and to impose a little discipline on myself so I don't let too much crap accumulate. This way every so often I have to "clean house" to make room.

The swap space is used by linux to swap out memory. The rule of thumb for that seems to be about the size of your ram.

 

[graphic7]

Typically, splitting up some of the general / partitions like /usr and /var are all about the purpose of the system in question. If you're running a server, you'll probably want to keep /var around, given it contains log files, etc. On a workstation, you might have some binaries you compiled yourself that you might want to keep in which case, splitting up /usr would preserve those binaries.

If you don't see any immediate need to split up /usr, feel free not to. I've worked with quite a few UNIXs over the years, and splitting up /usr is just a general rule for me. Typically BSD-based OSs will have home directories on /usr, therefore, splitting it up would be advantageous. Most of my programs I compile from source on BSD-based OSs and Linux distributions go in /usr/local, which I like to preserve.

 

[franznietzsche]

Well I'm currently posting while running under Fedora, haven't tried booting to windows yet though.

I gave the root 5 Gb, same for boot, swap 1 Gb (i have 768 Mb of RAM) and about 40 to /home.

Up and running fine, though i need to find printer drivers, my printer wasn't listed in the list that came up at startup (not sure why)and the disc only has Mac and Windows drivers.

 

[gerben]

hmm, the boot partition is only needed for the bootloader (grub) so it does not need much space, my boot partition is only 20 Mb. I think you could simply use three partitions on you Hd a /boot partition (20 Mb) a windows partition and a Linux partition.

When you start your system the following happens the bootloader on the boot partition (i.e. grub) is started when you then choose there which OS you want to start the kernel of either Linux or windows is tarted from one of the two other partitions.

 

[gerben]

http://www.dynamic-apps.com/linux_directories.jsp

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

 

[dduardo]

As I recall, Intel only offers their compilers in an RPM package install format. I could be wrong, but if this is true, then an RPM-based distribution like Fedora or SuSE will be your only choice. If you do choose to run, say a Debian-based package distribution, conversion utilities do exist to convert the RPM to the native package format, however, I would not put too much faith in those.

Gentoo's portage offers intel's compiler for both C++ and Fortran:

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=intel+compiler

 

[dduardo]

Well I'm currently posting while running under Fedora, haven't tried booting to windows yet though.

I gave the root 5 Gb, same for boot, swap 1 Gb (i have 768 Mb of RAM) and about 40 to /home.

Up and running fine, though i need to find printer drivers, my printer wasn't listed in the list that came up at startup (not sure why)and the disc only has Mac and Windows drivers.

I will have to agree with gerben and say that your boot parition is WAY too big. Mine is 32MB, but you could go smaller depending on how many kernel versions you keep around.

 

[graphic7]

Well I'm currently posting while running under Fedora, haven't tried booting to windows yet though.

I gave the root 5 Gb, same for boot, swap 1 Gb (i have 768 Mb of RAM) and about 40 to /home.

Up and running fine, though i need to find printer drivers, my printer wasn't listed in the list that came up at startup (not sure why)and the disc only has Mac and Windows drivers.

You won't find any printer drivers for UNIX/Linux on the CD or the manufacturer's site. Find out if the printer is a 'Postscript' printer. If this is true, getting it supported by LPD or Cups will be a simple matter. As I recall, there's a KDE app that configures Cups. You could go ahead and attempt to configure it using this app, and see if the printer is on the list.

Not all printers are Postscript. I bought a printer made in 94' or 95' by Lexmark; it upon non-Postscript and relied about the Windows GDI. Neither Cups or LPD supported it.

 

[mattmns]

When you were configuring your printer you did switch from "generic" to the company of your printer right?