[Westwales] Linux with XP

[Dick Bain]

Pax wrote:

>Wow!
>	Trust West Wales to come up with the goods! Many thanks for the many replies.
>I'm an old hand at dual install, I was asking the question because I heard that there
>were problems with XP dual boots in the early days and I didn't want egg all over my
>face if I wiped XP off a machine, never having dual booted with anything later than '98. 
>The reason I am thinking of using Mandriva is because my early experience of diskdrake 
>suggests that is the easiest way of resizing and partitioning. Once I've got the drive
>repartitioned I'll swap to Debian (how can anybody live without apt?).
>
>Defrag? Do I really, really have to? I can choose a machine with 70% free space. I started
>defragging one machine this morning and it looked as though it was going to take all day.
>How long should defrag take on a 50 gig hard drive with 30% usage? Do I really, really have to?
>  
>

I do recommend the defrag, there are some free defrag programs that will 
do a better and speedier job than MS's lamentable offering try: 
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html I have used it and 
it works well and is fairly speedy.
If you are really going the debian route, then I have to say use ubuntu. 
I have it on both my desktop and laptop and it is pretty bomb proof!
hwl
Dick