Ian wrote: > Well I can see that OK but for a start I will want to partition the one > drive and have XP on one and Linux on the other Part. >
If XP is occupying 100% of your hard drive, then you are going to have to 'shrink' the hard drive partition with a utility like Partition Magic. This can only be done if you have enough empty space in the XP partition(s) for a Linux partition. Also, while Partition Magic is an excellent (also not cheap) utility, there is no guarantee that shrinking the partition will not destroy either data or operating system files. When installing two operating systems on a single machine this way, a boot loader is necessary, usually place in the hard drive's MBR. Usually, when installing Linux after Windows has already been installed, the operation is seamless and trouble free, but every so often someone has problems accessing one or the other operating system. You will probably want to do some Googling on these issues. > While I could put them on separate drive I guess I will want the second free > for back up. > In the scenario I described, one would use three hard drives. Then number one drive would have XP on it. The number two drive would have Linux on it, and it would run in the same drive bay that XP was running in (master on the IDE0)... you would run one or the other operating system. The third hard drive would be in the second drive bay, and it would have the data on it. > I would like to know what Linux system and how to download and install a > free one as a start? > > Any suggestions? > It depends on what you are trying to do. If you want to learn Linux and UNIX-type operating systems in-depth, you would probably be best served by choosing one of the more *nix flavoured distributions. If you want to have a Windows-like environment, there are a lot of those available, too. You can find a lot of information on the various distros at: http://distrowatch.com/ Personally, I run Red Hat Enterprise (Desktop), FreeBSD 6.1 (Desktop) and OpenBSD 3.9 (Servers), so I use BSD more than I do Linux. -- -wittig http://www.robertwittig.com/ . http://robertwittig.net/ To unsubscribe from this list, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] & you will be removed. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
