[michael_jii]

hi,

i would like to install linux alongside xp for extra security,

which distro should i use

thanks, michael

[michael_jii]

is this reccommended if not, what is?

[twotugs]

You can use whatever distribution you prefer, it would seem Mandrake, SuSE, and Red Hat (Fedora) are popular choices to start with (I started with Lindows, and quickly tried others). What I'd be more concerned about is preparing the hard drive for Linux. Do you have a partition set up for it?

You could try Knoppix, which runs off a CD (no installation required). You can download it, and more here.

[michael_jii]

no but can't you do that in the setup?

thanks
michael

[tsunam]

linux, all its derivites run on a different file system from a windows system with its fat 32, ntfs, and soon to be sql filesystem.

If you have all the area's on your harddrive formated in any of these formats you will have a slight bit of difficulty. What you will need to do is back up any information on that partition and reformat it so you can 2 seperate partitions (you can't simply split up a drive partition on the fly. Since information is stored all over the platter you'd corrupt a good ammount in the process if you tried). After doing that then its easy

[Whiteskin]

So, i'm confused as to what you want to do... you want to have linux set up as a backup to xp? If thats all you want, then why not just keep a knoppix disk around? Having linux on your disk is not however going to increase the security of your box, unless you are gonna run linux as your main os, with xp apps through wine, or vmware.

[michael_jii]

yh, i want to use linux as my main os internet ect, and just have xp there incase it all goes terribly worng

[Whiteskin]

Then just grab whatever distro, and use (if you have a fat32 partiton) fips to split the partiton. After that just install linux on the extra one. If you dont have a fat32 partion (eg, NTFS) then you have to use partion magic. But once you partition then most installers will handle the boot setup.