[Nottingham] Dual Boot setup

[Mark O'Shea]

On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 21:30, David Wolfson wrote:
> I mentioned this in passing as while ago, but as I'm currently sat waiting for expertiments to run, this seems like a good time to crystallise my thought and seek advice.
> 
> I use windows.  I'm used to it and it (generally) works ok for what I want to do.  BUT (here it is), someone started me playing with Linux and I like it.  Not only in itself, but I like this whole 'Free' bussiness (I might even get myself a mozzila mug to drink tea from).  I'd like to start using it more but can't afford to mess up what I have working at the moment (i.e. windows :-( ).  
> 
> So I'm gettting a second hard drive, and want to set up a dual boot with XP home.  I was just going to set the second drive up as Linux, but it occurs to me now, that I'd really like to be able to access the same files whichever OS I'm running at the time. I know there are various issues with boot sectors and dual boots (something I'm hoping for guidance on).  I'm guessing that I need hda partitioned into 'boot', 'windows' and 'linux stuff/subpartitions' and hdb as 'all my files (that I can see from either OS)'.  So question 1 has to be:
> 
> will this work?
> 
Yes, it will.  However it doesn't have to be like that.  Linux can live
on hdb if you like, you don't need to repartition your current drive if
you don't want to, especially as new drives are getting bigger.

As for sharing files, you will probably want to format the shared
partition[s] as fat32 rather than ntfs as the ntfs write support isn't
quite up to scratch at the moment afaik (this is getting better on the
newest kernels).

> if so the 'YAY!'.  roll on the e-buyer order and MANY e-mails to this list to find out how to do it.  If not, then am I barking up the wrong tree, or is this possible a.n.other way?  What I'd like is a 'stable' os (odd thing to describe windows as I know), and experimental (for me) prefered OS, and then all the files I need and can't loose.
> 
> For now, I'm just trying to think about the basic 'architechture' of the system, but will of course be coming back with questions like;
> which distro do I want?
> and;
> so what is grub/lilo?
It's probably worth learning about grub now.  It is the
bootmanager/loader.  Which from a user point of view is the menu you get
when you switch on your computer which gives you a choice of operating
systems to boot ;-)

The best thing to do I would say is to obtain a copy of a distro (any
one, it doesn't really matter, you can replace it if you don't like it),
read the installation instructions and install it.  Then come back and
tell us how happy you are that it all works perfectly (or not).

The partitioning is really a matter of experience of what you use your
system for.  But those mentioned by the email by Josh that has just
dropped into my mailbox are a fair start (consider seperate /usr and
/var).

I hope this helps.

-- 
Mark O'Shea