Some Question!(dual booting XP Pro & Mandrake 8.0) hdd .....

[black~cobra]

Hi !! first post here :) I am running right now XP Pro (english) and i would like to have a dual boot with Mandrake 8.0. I have, like all the newbie some question!

First one ; I have a 20gig hdd, my c drive is 10 gig and there is xp pro on it in NTFS , the remaining 10gig would be better in fat32 or ntfs ?

Second one ; Dual boot ? when i install Mandrake 8.0 does the installation will take care of that ??

oh damnit i forgot the other one :mad:

thanks to anybody that reply to me :) :eek:

[dkeav]

firstly why 8.0 i would suggest 9.0 if you can run xp pro you can handle 9.0 and it is a far cry of an improvment over 8.0

second mdk will use a ext3 filesystem so your partition would be better off as empy un partitioned space and the mdk install will have an option to use free space and auto partition it for you those partitions should suffice for your install

good luck

[black~cobra]

Thanks for your reply ;)(

i dl mandrake 8 cause i saw it on another pc and it was looking good

Do you know where i could find how to do this : i saw on the net that if theres no floppy in the a drive it would boot the other os (XP) and when theres a floppy in it it would boot Linux .......

[black~cobra]

btw im running a PIII 705MHz with a TNT2:( ..... :)

[billdozor]

if you want to boot from the cdrom, you need to make sure that in the bios, the boot order has your cdrom drive before your hdd.
if you don't know how to get into your bios: when you boot up it should say something like "press delete to enter setup/bios" or something along those lines.

[dkeav]

the first cd you burn will be bootable you may have to change your settings in your bios to make your comp boot from cdrom though , the reason it was booting from a floppy was either their mobo didnt support booting from a cdrom or they didnt install a bootloader to handle the operation

i would go with 9.0 it looks twice as good and will install even easier your sytem will handle it no problem

[billdozor]

i agree, 9.0 is much better.

[black~cobra]

thanks for your reply guys !

what i mean is that : i saw somewhere that (during the install or after the installation ) you could change a setting to allow windows to boot directly if there is not a specific floppy in the drive and when there is that floppy in the drive it would boot linux directly .... i hope that im clear now ;) .....

[dkeav]

guess my answer wasnt very clear

during the install you will be prompted to add a bootloader i beleive you will want to do the expert install to get this option just say no but when prompted to create boot disks say yes

you have to do this in expert install mode or else it will just install lilo for you anyways

without a bootloader the only way to get to linux is with that disk ie not messing up your mbr and goes directly into win if the boot disk is not present if you lose the disk or it gets corrupted though you will need to use your install disks and some dos utilities to create a new one

[black~cobra]

Originally posted by dkeav
guess my answer wasnt very clear

during the install you will be prompted to add a bootloader i beleive you will want to do the expert install to get this option just say no but when prompted to create boot disks say yes

you have to do this in expert install mode or else it will just install lilo for you anyways

without a bootloader the only way to get to linux is with that disk ie not messing up your mbr and goes directly into win if the boot disk is not present if you lose the disk or it gets corrupted though you will need to use your install disks and some dos utilities to create a new one

oh ok ! :) i understand it now ;) btw is there a really huge difference between the 8.0 and the 9.0 version of mandrake .... if it that better i will probably download it and burn it ... btw when i will install it i choose to install in expert mode right ? and i chosse to make these boot diskette and i will have to use these to boot to linux right ? am i right ?

[dkeav]

the difference between them is mainly in their packages and bugs that were fuxed also better hardware support if you have anything usb mkd 9 will get it right off the bat

for packages in 8.0 your stuck with old software and wms ie gnome1.4 and kde2.2

wheres in 9.0 you get gnome2 and kde3 which are vast vast improvments over their predecessors

if you dont beleive me install 8.0 use it for a while then install 9 and see which one you like better


and yes your install theories are correct

[JohnT]

Link for Dual Boot. (http://linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75693&highlight=dual+boot)

[black~cobra]

Originally posted by dkeav
the difference between them is mainly in their packages and bugs that were fuxed also better hardware support if you have anything usb mkd 9 will get it right off the bat

for packages in 8.0 your stuck with old software and wms ie gnome1.4 and kde2.2

wheres in 9.0 you get gnome2 and kde3 which are vast vast improvments over their predecessors

if you dont beleive me install 8.0 use it for a while then install 9 and see which one you like better


and yes your install theories are correct

Thanks alot for your help dkeav :) i installed it yesterday (for fun) and it wasnt as good as i though (got 50% cpu usage when doing nothing and some funny thing.... didnt recognize my -old- hadware etc....) so i just reformated and i am going to dl M9 today :D:D thanks again :):)