Topic: DualBoot Mandrake/Linux

[WhiteDevil]

After all the recent scares regarding Microsoft, now the law suit from the American Lawyers, and the Blaster Worm now seems to be one of the best times to migrate to Linux.

Ive got the Mandrake 9.1 ISOs, the CDs to burn them onto, all im waiting on is the 80GB Seagate ive ordered.

But :-

I dont want to leave the OS ive come to know and love behind, even with its massive security craters (holes seems a bit of an understatement ), so im going to be dual booting...

Has anybody got a clue here how to do this, or, anything to add to the tutorial i have already found? (http://www.devhood.com/tutorials/tutorial_details.aspx?tutorial_id=405)

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I will be booting :-
     Mandrake Linux 9.1
     Windows XP Professional


on a :-
     Seagate Barricuda 80GB (7200rpm)
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Any help appreciated, [and now i hope Mozilla will let me post this large a message without giving me that bloomin "Form contains no data" message...]

[Simon]

[and now i hope Mozilla will let me post this large a message without giving me that bloomin "Form contains no data" message...]

Yes, I get that, very occasionally.  I've never found out what it means!  

[Sandra]

I think its better if you use your old drive as one boot drive and your new one as another WD.
There can be problems dual booting on the same drive.
The normal procedure for dual booting is that the older windows operating system goes on first then the later version modifies the firsts MBR to tell it that it has a dual boot sytem in operation so that it will allow you to boot into either system on start up.
With linux/mandrake being non MS I am not sure which is the best one to install first.
Some variations of Linux run under windows (Monkey Linux does as far as I know), maybe Adept or Dack or Lobo will be on soon to confirm the best way with a normal Linux setup  

[DJ]

Hi WD,

Funny that - I spent last night seting up my laptop to dual boot Mandrake Linux 9 and Windows XP. I had set this up previously but deleted liux as I wasn't using it - now I need it for my uni course - so put it back on  

I was quite lucky, I have a sony Vaio laptop, the hard drives on these are already partitioned into two, so all I needed to do was to tell Mandrake to format and install itself onto drive D:\ (which was empty anway).  It then loads a Lilo screen at boot asking which OS to run.

Once in Linux you can access all the files in Windows XP (such as exisition documents etc), buy in Windows you can't access linux files.

I have also managed to set up my wireless network card - which I never bothered before. So I now use Mozilla (yes Simon Mozilla  ) when in mandrake.

The only problems I know of are:

1) My printer isn't supported - or I haven't found out how to make it work in Linux. Its a Canon i320.
2) When shutting down linux, if you chose to reboot to Windows, the system freezes and you need to power down fully and then boot up and choose windows.

Hope this sheds some light - I am that technical, but the installation was easy peasy!

Any questions just ask,

DJ  

[Sandra]

Which file system have you formatted XP and Linux with DJ ?
Do they both use FAT 32 or have you got XP on NTFS and Linux on FAT 32 ?

[DJ]

To be honest Sandra I don't know. Windows XP Home is on Fat32 accoring to "My Computer".

During madrake linux is told me that the D:\ drive needed to be reformatted as it was Fat32 and a mount point needed to be created. I let it do its stuff and it worked.

I'm on Windows at the min - but I'll go to Linux later and find out for you.

My next mission is to get Exceed working - a program that lets you run X servers direct from Windows - so I don't need to reboot. This is the system run at uni and I am entitled to a license as I am a student. Won't do this til the weekend though - haven't got the time  

DJ

[Simon]

DJ: So I now use Mozilla (yes Simon Mozilla  )

[DJ]

Accoring to my Mandrake Control Center..


C:\ Running Windows XP Home is Fat32
D:\ Running Mandrake Linux 9 is Jouralised ext FS2 (?)

I don't know if I formatted partition D:\ correctly but everything seems to be working fine.

Did a full backup just now - just to be sure


DJ

PS - Wrote this whilst in Mozilla - why do the smilies not line up nicely in straight lines?

[Simon]

I think Sean must have been    when he positioned them!  

[DJ]

Sean never  

DJ

[Adept]

It is only Mozilla that cannot line the smilies up properly IE6 and Opera work fine

[WhiteDevil]

Ive got the problem in Moz (still running good and strong) but IE is fine.. Its an odd problem - but back onto topic  

Sandra has said to use a program to partition the hard drive, but i cant for the life of me remember what its called (or was it on the 98SE boot floppy?) - Does anybody have any experience in partitioning? Ive been recommended fdisk (but im not hot on command line tools) and PartitionMagic, which ive been told can be dodgy and take a long time...

[Tony]

White Devil,

I use Partition Magic Version 7, honest it's easy peazy mate, otherwise I would'nt be using it  

You know I would'nt mind having a go with Linux myself sometime, as you say, Microsoft and it's security flaws is a pain in the arse.

[Sandra]

Hi WD, I recommended using FDISK freom a 98se boot disk as XP will not format an 80 gig drive in FAT 32, it will only do up to 32 gig otherwise it will do it in NTFS.
As we werent sure which file system Linux uses and you have your other PC on the network in FAT 32 it is probably better to do it in DOS and set it up as FAT 32 so that you can access any information with either OS and/or PC.
Partition magic will do it but I found that it took longer than I expected when I recently used it to move 2 gigs from one partition to another but that was on a drive which had about 20 gigs of data that it had to save or move about.
Fdisk would have formatted and partitioned the drive how I wanted it in much less time and with no risk of any data loss at all  

[Adept]

Woudn't he be better off formatting to NTFS and installing an NTFS file system in Linux?