Anyone running a duel boot Windows XP/Linux system?

[fujiyama]

I was curious how good it works...Also what kind of space does Linux require (how much should be partitioned and allocated for Linux)?

I have a cable broadband internet connection. Is it difficult to get that to work with Linux? BTW, I was specifically thinking of installing Red Hat.

I've done it before on a different system and it worked fine...but I couldn't get the cable modem to work with it and never had the time to really learn how to use it...so I got rid of it.

[Kellanved]

1. no problem at all

I'd advise against Read Hat, but that's mostly a matter of personal taste.

Linux itself doesn't need much HD space (from a few hundred MBs to a few Gigs), but some applications do. SuSe 9.1 can write on NTFS, so it's possible to share a Partition between the OSs.



A cable modem should work without much trouble, but like all networks the setup can suffer from "esoteric" errors.

Edit: you can download SuSe here, but it misses some of the commercial tools:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/README.FTP

[BlueEyedSon]

3. Suse here too. Downloaded it free. Works Great!

I use BootIt NG as a boot manager:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

[Kellanved]

4. no need for a 3rd party Boot Manager

Even the XP bootmanager can be used to load LILO :hi: .

[BlueEyedSon]

7. I have win2k, i like the partition tools of Boot It

dont think Windoze offers any dynamic partition tools.....

[Imperialism Inc.]

2. I used to have a PC that dual booted.

It isn't too difficult to set up. Look around at the Linux HOW-TO sites and you should be able to find the information. You can run Linux on as little as a few hundred megabytes. I have a gentoo Linux running on under a giga-byte right now on an old PC. If you want to dual boot though you will obviously need enough for windows too.

To dual boot I have used gentoo and slackware, but RedHat should work fine as well. You'll need something like 'Partition Magic' to partition your drives if you have the NT file system. Be careful though! Back up before you do anything as Partition Magic can be real trouble. There are probably other partition programs but that is the only one I know of that does NT file systems. Also, you'll want to make sure your PC is fairly vanilla as Linux is picky about your BIOS. That is why I no longer dual boot on my main system. I added IDE expansion cards and Linux can't handle it any more.

I use Linux to connect to DSL but cable should work as well. It may even be easier depending on the provider. The cable systems I have set up for people (windows only) get their IP lease automagically through the cable modem. With DSL you have to worry about PPPOE which can be a little daunting for a newbie I would guess. It isn't too bad though. I'm no unix expert and it doesn't take much to get around if you are familiar with using DOS or other command line type tools. It helps if you have co-workers to turn to for help though, in case anything unexpected comes up.

Hope this helps.

[mike_c]

5. I'm running several dual boot machines....

One is WinXP/SuSE 8.2 and two are WinXp/Fedora. I'll probably change at least the SuSE distro to Debian soon.

I'm not presently running any of these with partitioned single disks, although I have in the past. I'm a bit of a space hog on my most frequently used machines, so I've found that the best solution is to simply buy an additional hard drive for linux. My typical setup is 2 80 Mb drives with WinXP and the bootloader on the primary drive and linux on the secondary.

It works great for me with one caveat-- file sharing between the WinXP and linux sides of a single machine. With NTFS file systems on the XP drive this is awkard-- there is a kernel module that lets me mount and read NTFS files systems from the linux side but not write to them. I use VFAT filesystems on one of my XP disks to get around this problem-- linux can both read and write on VFAT partitions, however XP cannot see the linux file system at all, period. Typical MicroSoft head-in-the-sand.

The cable modem setup is easy during installation.

Don't use an older RedHat branded distro-- get the latest Fedora 2 disks (downloadable) if you want to go the RH route: http://fedora.redhat.com/

I use the XP side for a relative few apps that either have not been ported to linux or for which equivalent linux apps don't exist, or for special situations-- for example, the lecture halls where I work ONLY support Powerpoint, so I use XP PowerPoint to assemble my lecture presentations.

You might also check into running Crossover Office on a single boot linux machine if you only want to run the windows apps it supports, e.g. MS Office and Photoshop.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

6. Peripherals and dual-boot machines...

My hubby wants to convert our computer to an XP/Linux dual-boot, but I'm hesitant to let him because he has a friend who has the same setup who had a lot of trouble getting the peripherals configured afterwards. I still don't think he's got his sound card working, and I know he's had other difficulties as well (no modem ones that I knew of... but I think he's connected to a LAN in his apartment).