[Sussex] Dual Boot

[John D.]

On Thu, 2005-04-14 at 00:31 +0100, Gavin Stevens wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> My partner, Tracy, is very keen for me to install Ubuntu on her PC. This
> will make it a dual boot system.
> 
> She currently has Windows 98 SE (yuk) on her machine. There is only the
> one "partition" at present - namely the whole 80GB HDD (I had to build
> the system quickly after her old PC died so that she could continue
> working & never got round to doing proper partitions).
> 
> I am quite happy dealing with creating partitions for Ubuntu & I don't
> anticipate any huge problems.
> 
> However, does anyone have any hot tips for creating a dual boot system,
> in the hope that I may avoid big problems & thus keep Tracy's enthusiasm
> for Ubuntu.
> 
> In time, I imagine that Tracy will probably ditch Windows, but she needs
> to keep it for now so that she can continue to work without
> interruption.
> 
> If it is of any use, Tracy's PC has the following spec:
> 
> Motherboard: Intel D845
> CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz Celeron
> MEM: 256MB
> HDD: Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB
> CD-R/RW: Samsung
> Sound: Onboard
> Graphics: Onboard
> Modem: Internal PCI Modem

Well, my system is dual boot on one hard drive, which has been sucessful
since I started this linux "thing".

Initially, I had just the two partitions i.e. one windies and one linux
(mandrake). I changed things when I learned about the pro's of having
seperate /home, plus when I moved over to gentoo, there default seems to
be /boot, /swap and /root - which I understand would have meant that
the /home is still resident in the /root.

So, my system is now a windows, /boot, /swap, /root and /home - I've got
the space (120 gigs) so I've got some wasted space i.e. /boot=1 gig
(more than enough, could be smaller), /swap=1.5 gigs (again, only
because of the traditional linux wisdom of having a /swap of twice the
installed RAM), the /root=20 gigs and the rest is /home (oh and
windowsXP is about 20 gigs).

Benefits of using seperate /home, well if Tracy (or you) wanted to try a
different distro, you just install it to the /root (you just have to
make sure that theres an entry for the /home partition in
the /etc/fstab). don't touch the /home and then you can just carry on
where you/she left off - as long as you install all the same packages.

finally, looking at the rest of the spec, you may have to meddle with
sound and graphics, it depends on the chips.

the only issue may be the modem i.e. if it's a "winmodem". You'd have to
google for winmodems (can't remember the actual URL) to make sure
whether you can get a driver for it or not. I can't elaborate, because
I've never had to bother using my internal modem.

Maybe that helps some?????

regards

John D.

p.s. the only thing that I've always done is the partitioning with
partition magic 8 - though only because I've used it before and have a
copy to hand - fdisk or cfdisk didn't look to onerous when Steve D
showed me how that works.