[SECOND]

Hello all ... I am currently I a running XP Pro on an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with 2 Gigs of RAM and 750 Gigs on 3 hard drives. Could anyone please point me to a link that will tell me how to install Linux as a second operating system?

Thanks!!
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[lotuseclat79]

Look for the user saikee's signature links on any posting of his in this forum - you can usually see his name as the last poster to a thread, but if not, use the Search facility in this forum only for Posts by saikee.

-- Tom

[saikee]

This is not easy because the procedure is distro-specific.

Basically you need

(1) Some unallocated free space in a hard disk. 10Gb for Linux and 1Gb for a swap which you can treat it as an overhead. The two should be in two partitions. If you have used up all your hard disk space (99% do) then you need to "resize" the boundary of an existing partition to make it smaller. The space squeezed out is the unallocated apace.

(2) Ideally you should use a Linux Live CD, that can run without being installed onto the hard disk, to create the two partitions because the correction type will be used. For Linux partition should be 83 and swap is 82. If you use Windows to create them then they are not suitable for Linux because ntfs is Type 7 and fat16 Type 6 and fat32 Type c. Only a Linux can create partition and specifying the type number at the same time. Anther important factor is a Windows user must be aware of how a Linux names a partition. If you don't then you could give an installer to destroy a Windows partition.

(3) You can then boot up a Linux installer and tell it to use the big partition you have created. All installer knows a Linux partition when it sees and will use the swap with you telling it to.

I suggest you try to download and run a few Live CD. Find one or two you like and then let us know which one you want to go for.

Many installer will do everything for you but my advice is to try it one task at a time otherwise when thing doesn't work out you will lose both systems, don't know where is you Linux or Windows partitions and would not be able to describe you mistakes correctly for assist other to formulate a cure.

Installation is only about a 15 minutes job but know you steps is as important to learn a new operating system.

[RobLinux]

Every Linux distro I used, part of the installer was to create the partitions; later GUI models even offering to do scary things like Resize Windows partitions for you. They provide a directed Partition & Format File System dialog, which steers you through the process, until it's happy.

Because every installer is different, I like the ones which have expert mode (and trust the User to be competent), which let me partition, and build the file systems the way I like, so Debian Installer OK (it insists on formatting swap), SuSE Installer good (insists only on too many desktop applicationst) and you have to click through too much GUI stuff; Ubuntu Installer bad it not obey, it insist on formatting itself!!! But that's because I can prepare the disk before hand in a Linux (or Linux Live CD) environment.