Dual Booting Class?

I feel I must be enlightened to the art of Dual booting. Such questions that come along with this..journey.. are what risks may there be? What harm will be done to the system..I seek interest in either Windows XP SP2/MacOSX/RHL. . Btw I'm kind of a newb with prog'ming. Oh and I'm using NTFS.

First step: Forget about having MacOSx on a PC.

Second: Some Linux distros have an included boot loader (LILO) which scans the partitions and adds the necessary options when booting.

So is Ubuntu a good way to go? Do I use Partition Magic to make the partitions? 3? 1 for WXP, 1 for Ubuntu, 1 for the programs?

Ubuntu is good way to go. Here is a guide for beginers.

http://www.hezardastan.org/breezy_xp...nstallonoldhdd

Modern Linux distros don't use LILO(LInux LOader) anymore, they use GRUB, (GRand Unified Bootloader) which allows for a fancy graphical screen at startup with all your choices on it. Linux isn't short of eye-candy these days, so the bootloader had to move with the times.

Also, Ubuntu is a good way to go, but it's not necessarily the most newb-friendly way to go. I should also point out that contrary to the bullshit that you've been exposed to, you don't need to know anything about programming to use Linux, or to dual-boot. You might need to know something about scripting, but you can learn as you go. Scripting is similar to programming, but like 100x more simple.

NTFS support has been brought into the recent line of Linux Kernels, and it will soon be perfected, if it is not already. The Kernel is the name that's given to the most important part of Linux, the central system functions. Without the Kernel, it wouldn't be Linux; it wouldn't work. Most of the other parts of the OS aren't specific to Linux, they work on other OS too.

I wouldn't be too sure on the NTFS thing. It's been stuck at read-only support for at least a couple of years now.

Linux can write to NTFS, but it's ability is limited. Essentially, you can only modify what's already there.

Also, if you're gonna dual-boot Windows with Linux make sure you install Windows first since it'll install its own bootloader no matter what. After that you can install GRUB at the same time as Linux.

Is there something bad about putting mac on a PC?

The Mac OS uses the PowerPC architecture currently (although it has changed to the x86 that most Windows-based PCs use). Thus, it is written to take advantage of the PowerPC chip, and not the Pentium chip, meaning that you would essentially be unable to run it.

Also, assuming that you DID get a version of OSX that ran on the Intel architecture, the OS is STILL written to take advantage of Mac-specific hardware, and thus driver support for non-Mac systems is spotty at best.

You're better off sticking with Linux.

I have about 20 GB of free space on my 120 GB NTFS drive. How should I create the partitions needed for Ubuntu?

Well, first you're going to have to reformat the 120 NTFS partition to make room for the Linux partition since you can't install Linux on NTFS. Then you're going to have to figure out just how you want to do this. For the simplest setup:
/boot 50MB ext2
swap RAMx2 swap
/ Whatever's Left reiserfs (or any working filesystem)

Or you can go with a more complicated setup that can, supposedly, yield benefits. Take my setup for example (but keep in mind that I need a lot of space on /usr for Gentoo's package system and I'm using way more than 20GB):

Device      Mount Point    Size   FSType
/dev/hda1   /              1GB    ext3
/dev/hda5   /boot          50MB   ext2
/dev/hda6   /usr           20GB   reiserfs
/dev/hda7   /var           20GB   reiserfs
/dev/hda8   /opt           10GB   reiserfs
/dev/hda9   /tmp           10GB   reiserfs
/dev/hda10  /home          40GB   reiserfs

My hard drive is 200GB and in addition to these partitions I've got four NTFS partitions set aside for Windows XP.

Well, ubuntu can do all of this for you, thanks to it's built in partition help tool in the installer. Just make sure you double-check all the choices you make.

Do I have to back up my files before I do partition?

When I installed Ubuntu I backed up my stuff only for safety's sake, in case anything went wrong, though nothing did.

I partitioned my drive through the Ubuntu Installer and everything went fine. When I next went into WinXP it handled the change to the new size it was in with no trouble at all.

If you're expecting to be able to browse your files in your windows partition from the start (Assuming it's NTFS) you'll be let down, though it is possible with a few little tools installed.

Likewise, winXP can't read ext3 file systems.

Originally Posted by Roph

If you're expecting to be able to browse your files in your windows partition from the start (Assuming it's NTFS) you'll be let down, though it is possible with a few little tools installed.

Browsing Windows NTFS and FAT drives are easy. You just have to know how to set it up in the fstab file.

Other than that, it's not hard. Distros like Mandriva (maybe even Suse,) do that for you from the start.

Quote:

Likewise, winXP can't read ext3 file systems.

But there's programs that will let you.

Ok I tried using ubuntu partitioner to use the free space and I dunno what I it was doing. My screen was just blue for like an hour. I think I'm gonna go with Mandriva.

I use Partition Magic first to shrink down the Windows/NTFS partition.

Then in Ubuntu, it's as easy as telling it to automatically partition the free space on the drive.

Lol forgot to thank u all for the help.

Here is...

Anyways, I used Partition Magic to shrink and finally got Ubuntu installed. To uninstall just overwrite Master Boot Record then delete Linux Partitions.

Mandriva supports NTFS. Does that mean I will get to access the same programs I could in Windows XP?

If Mandriva supports NTFS then you can access stuff on NTFS drives. That does *not* mean that you can run Windows software.

Have it set up with Mandriva Linux 2006. Needed to overwrite the MBR, and GAG just caused more problems.

Congratulations. Now you can start reading all the man pages.