[conflict47]

I don't exactly have a whole lot of experience with Linux, but have been hearing great things about it. So I decided to try it. But before I rush into the installation, I was wondering if there were any recommendations as to how I should install it. I have 2 internal hard drives: one 500GB with XP running on it, and one 186GB with absolutely NOTHING on it. Completely free. Initially, installing Linux on the separate hard drive seemed like the way to go. Is it? Or should I just install it on another partition on C:?

Any recommendations on which version of Linux to install? I was thinking about using Suse...

Also: I realize that without previous experience with Linux, installing this OS might be a whole lot different than Windows. Any advice when installing?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[vtel57]

I keep my Linux and Windows on different drives. It's a personal preference, but one that I find useful for my purposes. With a 180+G drive, you can easily install numerous Linux distributions to play with.

I would initially partition that drive to have about 14 or so partitions. That would give you two partitions for each distro you want to try (for a total of 6) and a partition for /swap and one for /common. This last being a storage or archive partition that you can access from any of your Linux installations.

Initially, you would probably be only installing one Linux, possibly Ubuntu or PCLos, I would assume. If that's the case, you would mount your /(root) on one of your first partitions and /home on the next. You would also be able to access your /swap partition and common partition from this installation.

Later on, when you've become relatively comfortable with the Linux that you initially installed, you'll probably be wanting to try a couple more you run across. With those already made partitions, you'll be all set.

Here's how I would set up the partitions:

1 --> Primary --> 2Gig --> /swap
2 --> Primary --> 28Gig --> /common to all storage
3 --> Primary --> 150Gig
4 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
5 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
6 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
7 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
8 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
9 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
10 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
11 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
12 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
13 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
14 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
15 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux

Disconnect your Windows hard drive completely before partitioning and installing your Linux drive. Once you have the Linux drive partitioned, install your first distro. Allow the installation to write its GRUB or LILO bootloader to the MBR (master boot record) of the Linux drive.

Set your BIOS to boot the Linux drive first. You can add a Windows entry for the Linux bootloader once you reconnect your Windows drive. This way you can easily boot either your Windows or your Linux installations at startup. Later when you install other Linux distributions, do NOT allow them to install their bootloaders. Just manually edit the original one in your first installed Linux OS to add the new installation entries.

This is how I've done it for a couple years on my systems. I currently run seven distributions of Linux and Win XP on my system. Others here may have suggestions for you that might be easier for you.

However, you choose to do it... just DO IT! You won't regret it. I went to Linux 100% almost two years ago. I only have the Windows on my system for playing games. Otherwise, I wouldn't have it at all. I can do everything I ever did in Windows with Linux, usually faster and more efficiently... and DEFINITELY MORE securely.

Have FUN while you're learning it. That's half the battle.

Luck!

~Eric

[vtel57]

By the way, HERE is a link to a custom Linux home page that I created. There are links to many sites there that would be helpful to a new Linux explorer.

Enjoy!

[RobLinux]

Originally Posted by conflict47

I don't exactly have a whole lot of experience with Linux, but have been hearing great things about it. So I decided to try it. But before I rush into the installation, I was wondering if there were any recommendations as to how I should install it. I have 2 internal hard drives: one 500GB with XP running on it, and one 186GB with absolutely NOTHING on it. Completely free. Initially, installing Linux on the separate hard drive seemed like the way to go. Is it?

Yes it's easier to have 1 XP and 1 Linux boot disk.

Any recommendations on which version of Linux to install? I was thinking about using Suse...

Also: I realize that without previous experience with Linux, installing this OS might be a whole lot different than Windows. Any advice when installing?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Open SuSE 10.3 is fine, other good choices are Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva.
Do a network install, and pick up the updates, they're important!

If you can boot the Live CD, you should have little difficulty. Take the software defaults, let it partition your 2nd drive. 1 tip would be to create a Windows partition to share data with XP on your 2nd drive.

Have your XP media CD, in case when you install GRUB, you have it write to the wrong disk. Easy to fix by booting off Windows CD and having it fix it's boot sectors.

If you want to be super safe, run the install with your XP disk turned off, it's easy enough to make the XP disk accessible to Linux later.

[RobLinux]

Originally Posted by vtel57

Here's how I would set up the partitions:

1 --> Primary --> 2Gig --> /swap
2 --> Primary --> 28Gig --> /common to all storage
3 --> Primary --> 150Gig
4 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
5 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
6 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
7 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
8 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
9 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
10 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
11 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
12 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
13 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux
14 --> Extended --> 10Gig --> /root for Linux
15 --> Extended --> 15Gig --> /home for Linux

Whilst I get what you're doing, I'd start off much simpler; that is pretty complex to allow 6 distros and is probably too much to manage to start with for most.

Just let the installer do it's thing, have a play, and then when it's decided whether he'll keep it, try various distro's, have a shared data area with XP etc, then plan.

Experiment first simple & easy, plan to throw that away.

Then, I like to have stuff on the fastest part of disk, particularly /boot & /usr, with / & /home close together, with swap following on (it doesn't get used all that much).

[vtel57]

You are, of course, correct, Rob. That is a bit much for someone not familiar with partitioning schemes or with Linux. However, I was trying to prepare the poster for the future. He doesn't have to do anything with the extra partitions at first, but they'll be there when he gets more adventurous later on. This scheme does presuppose that the poster has some partitioning knowledge and experience, though. Definitely not for the neophyte. There are many sites and tutorials on the I-net that can be helpful to teach one the ins and outs of partitioning and Linux multi-boot installations.

Your way is surely the simpler and more practical of the above suggestions; for a newer user especially.

Regards,

~Eric

[RobLinux]

Yes, its nice to think ahead, my way is actually quite a sophisticated partition scheme, which dumbed down distro's are discouraging. I hate having everything in 1 huge pot, and disks are so big, that there's no need to maximise available free space by having it all in one filesystem.

You might like to play with some of my tricks. I will have a web cache filesystem for (wwwoffle or squid) and by having that seperate, browser speed does not suffer due to X-booting into a new distro, you keep your cache.

You might also like to look into stuff like Virtual Box and due your experiments in "containers", under one main OS to save re-configuring all the hardware and enduring brokenness.

Unfortunately libata is imposing the SCSI limit on partition numbers, so just when disks are big enough to make, and udev /dev/disk/by-{label,UUID} makes device name changes a non-issue, so lots of logical partitions sensible they go an impose a static limit on us!

[monckywrench]

Noob-friendly simple answer:

The easy way is to disconnect the XP drive, boot a live CD/DVD, and go with a default install of something with good multimedia support and a large community. Ubuntu fits that well, and Kubuntu with KDE will be more familiar to Windows users.

http://www.kubuntu.org/

One way to select which drive to boot from without modifying the boot records is to use the BIOS to choose which drive to boot first.