Installing Linux

Does anyone know if I can install a copy of linux, when my computer already has a dual booted of Vista and XP? I'm kind of scared that I might have to reinstall everything if I install Linux in the place of XP. Thanks and have a good day.

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Comments

dynamik

Depends on the distro, but I've had Ubuntu and (I believe) SUSE install fine over Vista. I'm sure Fedora and others would be fine as well. You should make a backup first just to be safe

shednik

I've had good luck with dual booting grub will detect it and configure it automatically usually...any reason you want to boot all 3? have you checked out vmware to play with linux?

rbutturini

Yeah! Grub does a great job detecting all your OS. Ubuntu's installer makes it very simple to configure too, and if you're new to Linux I'd start with Ubuntu.

+1 for VMWare though. If you have a nice robust machine it's great for trying out Linux.

remyforbes777

I would suggest installing it in a VMWare session. It should work the same.

rdix2501

I will just install it on MS virtual server.

Daniel333

If you can download the trial of Vmware workstation, you'll have the best results. The Microsoft Virtual PC often has issues with Linux.

dynamik

You could just download VMware Player and an appliance: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/45

Or use Virtual Box. It's not nearly as robust as VMware Workstation, but it's free, and it'll probably do everything you need.

liven

dynamik wrote:

Depends on the distro, but I've had Ubuntu and (I believe) SUSE install fine over Vista. I'm sure Fedora and others would be fine as well. You should make a backup first just to be safe

This *shouldn't* be a problem like the mighty Dynamik suggests. However make sure you know what your doing when it comes time to setup the file system. Don't blow away any partitions your unsure of.

Linux should take care of getting the boot loader in there for you so you should be ok.

But like the others have wisely suggested using VMware ( i preffere the free server version) is a very good option. Performance is not as good a letting linux have a dedicated PC for itself. But if your not processing A LOT of data then VM is fine. And actually if you have a decent machine to run VMware on you can still through a lot of data at it.

I used an old P3, with 256 gigs of RAM, running windows 2000, that had VMware running, 3 network cards and an emulated 3 party appliance running in VMWare. Now it was not the fastest ting in the world. But it worked.....