Okay I am not an expert on Fedora, but that never stopped anyone from posting before ;) On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 11:03:18 -0800 (PST), Rhett Butler <rhett_76 at yahoo.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I recently purchased a new box with an Athlon 64 3200+ proc > and 160 gig HD. I would like to make this a dual boot > machine (I need to run windows 2000 and visual studio 2003 > for work). > > I'm a bit of a newbie at installing/configuring linux (I > got fedora core 2 on my current box), and I'm not really > sure how to go about a dual boot. http://www.google.com/search?q=dual+boot+faq should get you pretty far. But you surely knew that already. There's also: http://www.linuxdoc.com/ http://www.linuxdocs.org/ http://www.tldp.org/ (anybody know if this is still alive??) http://www.justlinux.com/ http://linux.about.com/library/bl/open/newbie/blnewbie_toc.htm And this is just fun to flip thru:http://lost.sourceforge.net/ > I'm probably going to go with FC3 when it comes out on the > 8th since I'm used to fedora and it will take advantage of > the 64. > So here are my questions in order of severity. > > Can anyone point me in the direction of a good step-by-step > how-to manual? Like I said, I'm a bit of a linux newbie > and while I can run make install with the best of them some > of the more subtle configurations are still too tough for > me. If this isn't a real option would I benefit from > purchasing a book on it? Buying a book would be a really really Good Idea iff you only have the one computer to work with. I suspect a similar level of help, and probably more current information if you go to the right places, can be had for free on the web. That said, if you own NO books on Linux, do get at least one and read it cover to cover. Just because that is something that should be done. > How should I partition my drive? I'd like to go 100gigs > linux and 60 gigs for windows, but when I read stuff, > people recommend having quite a few more partitions for > different uses. What's the logic behind this? Is it > possible to have a partition that's shared by both (say for > mp3 files and other media)? My favorite Question! Among other reasons, it might be a good idea to make separate partitions for anything you'd want to run in a chroot'd environment (I'll leave it to others to argue the merits of this. Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure Fedora won't do any of what I'm about to discuss by default) Imagine someone manages to crack your [insert process name here] and attempt to use it for a Denial of Service attack on you by filling your [/tmp, /mp3, or whatever] folder full of garbage. First the chroot (theoretically) limits any damage to the small jail in which [process name] lives, in terms of trashing your filesystem. Additionally, if [/tmp, $whatever] lives in its own small (.5GB perhaps ?) partition, the damage is limited to .5GB of your HDD, rather than the 100GB you set aside for linux. With older hardware/kernels you also had to consider that the kernel must be loaded from within the first $N cylinders of the hard drive, which meant you had to make a separate partition to mount /boot in. This "shouldn't" be the case for you. I'd recommend making (at least) separate partitions for these folders (based on old information I read ca. 5 years ago from the Linux Documentation Project. Someone will surely tell me this is outdated/uneccessary/overkill) /boot // ~100-200MB /root // 1-10GB since you won't be doing much as root, *will you?* /var // dunno /tmp // 1-5GB?) /home // up to 20GB? More? /usr // several Gig, since you have the space / // enough to get the rest of Linux on-- This should add up to no less than 2GB and really no more than 20GB since /home and /usr (your biggest HDD hogs) are separate, although in theory you can expand ad infinitum C: // For Windows. What's good now, at least 5GB? D: aka /mp3 // a FAT32 partition unless you can live with having readonly access under Linux (have they fixed NTFS support yet?). Sounds like you'll have 50GB+ to work with, adjust to suit. This is where you keep data you care about, not the Windows partition) I have to mention that in my experience, there are big ugly problems creating partitions using Partition Magic 8 and RedHat 9 (on which Fedora is based, sort of). Something about misaligning the cylinders? Long story short, the RedHat installer didn't like the Linux partitions PM8 had created, and vise versa, which turned out to make partition resizing impossible in that particular dual-boot situation. YMMV. > What do I install first? Does it matter if I install > windows or linux first? How do I install an initialization > utility? My (2 years obsolete) experience was you install Windows first as it WILL hose your MBR and might fool with your partitions. > is FC3 a good idea? should I work with something less > bleeding edge? I think you're reasonably safe there. I'm guessing SP2 will create more problems with being "too new" and "untested" than anything in Fedora. Remember: for the most part, Linux distros are about packaging already-tested software into an easy-to-install format, rather than developing new software and unleashing it on the masses. FC3 will overwhelmingly have more "mature" versions of the same stuff you got w/ FC2. Feel free to argue this point ad nauseum. _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list