[dday1944]

I am new to Linux so bare with me. I am running XP with NTFS as the file system. I just installed another hard drive and want to put Linux on in it. Either Mandrake 9.1 or Red Hat 9. Is there any way to get this to work without having to reinstall XP to change to FAT32? Is there any way to get to both XP and Linux without having to dual boot? Can I have XP boot all the time just Linux boot when I want it? If anyone has any input that would be great. Thanks

[Whiteskin]

sorry dude, but without dool booting , i would not personally think that this is possible. two operating systems genereally is a dual boot. YOu could try putting cygwin on, over top of windows.

[soup4you2]

There's always vmware

although it is a really big resource hog. and i dont think you'll get the true feel of the OS. but it's a good place to start learning..

[lynch]

Try Knoppix .It runs entirely from CD-rom.
lynch

[codejockey]

I don't think a re-install is required. Although RedHat does not support NTFS filesystems out of the box, there are workarounds for this. Mandrake, OTOH, suports NTFS filesystems, so you can read from (but generally not write to) your NTFS/WinXP filesystems from Linux.

Now, the dual boot issue: you could certainly set things up so that XP is your default boot choice; if you do nothing, XP boots. If you select Linux, Linux boots. Without going into details, I believe you can use either XP to set this up or Linux (i.e., you can choose a boot loader from either O/S and still dual boot). You pretty much have to use a dual boot system or a Linux distribution that runs entirely from CD (such as Knoppix) if you want access to more than one O/S. In general, setting up a dual boot system is not difficult, although it may be confusing and a little intimidating if you haven't done it before.

Not sure what your concerns are with dual booting, but anyone who is willing to tackle Linux can certainly handle dual booting ().

Hope this helps.