Hello all.

I am a dedicated Windows user, but my office computer has Linux on it, and I have found that some things are easier there. I want to start doing some coding at home, which is definitely easier on Linux.

Long story short, I am defragging my hard drive now to get a few continuous gigs to partition off for Linux (probably Red Hat, but I am open to suggestions).

A few questions:
1.) There are several walk throughs on-line. Any ones that have worked for any of yall?
2.) What is Ubuntu and why is it better than Red Hat?
3.) How likely am I to completely wipe my hard drive?

Any other advice or words of wisdom would be GREATLY appreciated.

And should I use GRUB or LILO?

Any other advice or words of wisdom would be GREATLY appreciated.

DON'T PANIC

thanks:)

thanks to avatar i can provide this link:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/

they got me up and running when i was trying out fedora.
it should be pointed out that i know NOTHING about linux, and they STILL got me going!

thanks avatar.

BenTheMan:

I installed Ubuntu about a month ago. It's nice having both Windows and Linux available.

1.) There are several walk throughs on-line. Any ones that have worked for any of yall?

I got Ubuntu off a disk from a magazine I bought. It installed with no problems at all, although I later had to rethink my drive partitions (more on that in a moment). Ubuntu (and I'm sure many other distros are similar) came on a bootable CD. The system boots into Linux, then you click on an Install icon and it takes you through all the necessary procedures - repartitioning the drive, altering the boot record, setting the boot partition for Linux etc. The Ubuntu install can automatically resize a Windows partition to make room for Linux.

Linux requires 2 partitions of its own - one is the main (root) partition, the other is for the swap file (I'm using 2 GB for that). Linux itself only takes perhaps 4 GB of space, but you'll want to leave room to add programs.

I discovered after I installed that the support on Linux for the NTFS file system that Windows uses is still partially in the experimental stage. Reading Windows files in Linux is no problem, but writing them apparently still has some possible bugs. For safety, therefore, I decided it was best to create yet another small partition using the FAT32 format, which is readable and writeable by both Linux and Windows. I use that partition as a means for transferring files generated in Linux back for use in Windows, if I need to.

2.) What is Ubuntu and why is it better than Red Hat?

I'm not sure it is better, and I haven't compared. It is more recent, however. As I understand it, Ubuntu is built on top of Debian Linux, which is pretty well established.

In practice, I don't think it makes much difference which flavor of Linux you install. As far as I can tell, practically every program that works on one flavor will work on the others, although the desktop managers may need to be different.

3.) How likely am I to completely wipe my hard drive?

Everybody recommends that you have a complete backup of your hard drive before you start playing with partitions. You need to be VERY careful. I was concerned at one point that I may have lost my Windows partition. Luckily, I hadn't. I had a recent backup, but I didn't want to reinstall all the software and data (all 72 GB of it). It turned out that in playing with partitions to make room for the FAT32 partition (which I hadn't added originally) I trashed my Linux installation, and had to reinstall Linux again. And because Linux wasn't working, the master boot record pointed nowhere useful, so for a while I couldn't boot Windows either.

When you install GRUB (and, I assume, LILO), it overwrites the master boot record, which ordinarily points to Windows. The boot record then points to the boot loader in the Linux partition, which generates a menu allowing you to choose Linux or Windows (or whatever). But if you lose that boot loader, you won't be able to boot either OS. My solution when I had that problem was to boot from the Linux install CD and then simply install Linux again. If worst comes to worst, though, you can always boot from a Windows CD and repair the boot record to point to Windows.

Good advice James.

I would definately give Ubuntu a shot, it is as simple as using windows OS except if you are concerned with multimedia, then you have to do some configuring. The main thing you need to do is be certain you video card has linux driver but you can use Vesa driver if you have to.

If you want to completely avoid repartitioning and dual boot then you can always use a an external bootable drive just set the bios to boot the external drive first and leave it off when you want to boot into windows.

I am defragging my hard drive now to get a few continuous gigs to partition off for Linux

guess you mean contiguous.:rolleyes:

I suggest you have a separate partition for /home. That way you can change and mess up distros as frequently as you wish, but all your personalized looks and personal files will be untouched. It's good practice and everybody does that.

As for the difference between distros it's mostly to do with personal preferences. I for example can't stand Ubuntu, it gets on my nerves and has never been installed on one of my systems longer than for a few days.

As for partitioning Mandriva Linux has a very easy and fine partition tool.

I've been dual booting windows/linux for years, and single most important bit of advice I can give is to reiterate what James R already said.

Back
Everything
Up!

Even when you are familiar with the install process you will sooner or later do an "oops". This is from painfull personal experience.

Oh, and verify the integrety of your backup. That one bit me once. Ouch! ;)

Doesnt anyone think my way is the best? exactly what i stated to do. Seperate drive, seperate OS - NO PROBLEMS. Turn it on when you want it and leave it off when you dont. You only have to set the BIOS once too.

Your method is fine, if you have a separate hd. But the op probably doesn't.

Ben... Use GRUB. LILO is considered obsolete. Now watch the flames start from LILO true believers. :)