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My Dad wants my help to install Linux (as a double boot on a currently Window's machine), I've never partitioned a disk nor installed Linux before so does anyone have any helpful advice or good websites to look at before I screw everything up?
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Is your dad already familiar with Linux? If not, I'd say start him out with a bootable (aka "live" CD. From there, you just have to create a separate partition. From my limited experience, the linux setup program can do this for you, or you can use a third party program like Partition Magic. Normally, you setup a partition formatted Ext2 or Ext3 and a separate swap partition.
I'm not a linux expert. I'm new to it. My linux distro is slackware, and I never go into the gui with it. Not enough memory. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Find someone local who knows what he/she is doing and will be able to help your Dad out over time.
Seriously. You're not going to be around long, and Linux can have a steep learning curve, depending on how well its set up to start, how technically proficient the user is, and what the user wants to do.
What you would do is first reinstall Windows, putting it in a partition on the machine (you can do this during the windows install). You would leave, say, three other partitions: one double the amount of RAM, up to about a gig, one about 2 or 3 gigs in size, and one with all the rest of the non-windows space (this should be the largest of the three non-windows partitions).
You would then install Linux, and when setting up your install you would format the small partition to swap (really just designating it swap, no formatting involved), the 2 to 3 gig as the root (/) partition (using whichever filesystem, likely ext3 or Reiser; something journaled), and the remaining partition as the /home partition (same type as the 2 to 3 gig). Most Linux distributions will allow you to do these things straight off, but without a mild familiarity with partitions or a good intuition regarding them, easy to screw up.
Which Linux distribution would depend on several things, but most likely will be Ubuntu or one of the other relatively easy desktop distributions.
Oh, and first what you should do is see if the machine'll boot knoppix or the ubuntu live cd. If it will, most Linux distributions should autodetect, and several will at the very least.
If he has a wireless card, do not attempt to do this on your own. As Leto found out, wireless cards can be cantankerous in Linux (due to not having standardized interfaces), and while almost any can be dealt with if one knows where to look for help, one can easily get frustrated by looking in the wrong places.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'm going to look into all this, thanks! In the meantime I think I've convinced my Dad to talk to the computer guy at his work, and maybe I'll be spared all this.
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The windows boot manager will not play nice with Linux. When you install Linux post-WIndows install, Linux installs a boot manager (usually grub, nowadays) and sets up entries for all your operating systems already installed (windows, that is). This works great, and there's no reason to use windows' boot manager.
If grub ever stops working (not likely at all while your hard drive remains intact and you refrain from hard power-offs during boot) and you really need access to windows right then, you can always slip a windows/dos boot floppy in and restore the mbr, and it'll boot fine to windows.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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