Dual Booting Windows with Linux (Rusty)
I currently have a computer with windows xp on it and i would like to have linux fedora on it as well for a dual boot setup. I know you can have 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition. I have partition magic/boot magic installed on the machine currently. I have 2 hard drives one with the XP (c) and the other as backup (d). Now. My question is what are my options with the best install method. I have 2 ideas though.
1. Repartition drive c
2. Or Install linux right on drive D
If i would repartition drive c would i create another primary partition or logical partition for linux? If i repartitioned the drive in partion magic as a primary or logical drive would the computer still boot? I know you can only have 1 active partition at a time.
Right now i just want to partition the drive not necessarly install linux just yet.
Or my other option is to just install the linux on my secondary d drive. Which i know would work out pretty easily.
THere are so many options i have with partition magic Im just confused..... I assume i only use partition magic if i have one hard drive and want to repartition the drive to install 2 OS's right? Just havent done this in a long time and want to double check ..thanks
1. Repartition drive c
2. Or Install linux right on drive D
If i would repartition drive c would i create another primary partition or logical partition for linux? If i repartitioned the drive in partion magic as a primary or logical drive would the computer still boot? I know you can only have 1 active partition at a time.
Right now i just want to partition the drive not necessarly install linux just yet.
Or my other option is to just install the linux on my secondary d drive. Which i know would work out pretty easily.
THere are so many options i have with partition magic Im just confused..... I assume i only use partition magic if i have one hard drive and want to repartition the drive to install 2 OS's right? Just havent done this in a long time and want to double check ..thanks
Comments
Linux uses different partitions, swap, root, etc, so the concept of active partitions is a moot point since linux wont be using fat or ntfs parition. This may very by distro, but every one I played with didnt use any of the fat family even for an option.
You would want to have windows installed first and leave empty space. Then just create your linux partitions on the empty space during the insall process that you didnt let windows have. This should make the GRUB loader (again varies by distro im sure) the boot loader over boot.ini on the win partitions, and that will give you your choice of OS screen.
2 games againts San Fran coming up, oh yeah baby, why even play? just put then in the win category and call it good
I booted into it from the cd, used QTParted (included in the distro) to resize the Windows partition, created a new primary partition in the empty space, and formatted the new partition with the ext3 filesystem -- all with QTParted. I then installed the OS. This took about 30 - 45 minutes. Afterward, I installed fluxbox and removed KDE. After that, I spent a week further customizing the system.
Of course, before you do this, you'll want to defrag your hard drive from within Windows.
Edit: forgot to mention our Linux+ TechNotes related to partitions etc:
Are you trying to have a similar setup? The upside to virtual pc or vmware is you can actually be running two operating systems at the same time. The only partitioning I did was partition about 6 gigabytes of my HD formatted with FAT, not NTFS (this is to allow sharing of files and space between the linux installation and windows. Redhat 9 will not read or write to NTFS partitions.
Another important thing to remember is configuring the Linux to boot from another OS during setup. I've known Linux to swallow the primary OS if you miss this stage.