Okay, here as promised is a short HOW TO on making your machine dual boot with Linux and
Window XP.
If you are going to try this, it might be a good idea to make a printout of what I have
written here, so that you can refer to it as you do the install.
Ok, you say that your Windows XP partition takes up 10 GB of the 20 GB disk space, and that
its formatted as FAT32. That's cool. Make sure, before you do anything, that the rest of
the hard drive's space (which you want for Linux) is UNPARTITIONED disk space. Its OK if
its an extended partition filling there, or something, just don't create any partitions.
We are going to use Linux's installation program to do that.
TOP PHANTASM TIP: If you are using an operating systems' native file system for use
with that operating system, particularly to install the OS on that partition, always use
that Operating system's native tools and installation program if possible. (i.e. don't go
mucking around with Windows 2000 disk administrator snap-in to create partitions for linux,
etc, let linux's installation program or linux's fdisk do that.)
OK, hopefully your system can boot from CD. If so, pop CD1 in there, and go into your BIOS
and set the machine to boot from CD. If not, post back here for instructions on how to
create a linux installation boot disk.
As you boot from CD, you will see a screen appear of various choices. There's text install
mode, rescue, etc. Don't bother with any of that, and just hit
ENTER.
OK, after a short pause, a big blue screen will appear, and linux will tell you that its
running anaconda. Just wait.
Now the graphical installation program begins (hopefully
)
Choose your language (english for most, I guess) for the installation process. Then hit
NEXT, on the following screen, choose your keyboard type, model and layout. Test this
first in the little text box provided, so as to ensure that everything is working. Ensure
that the proper characters are displayed when you, for example, hit shift and one of the
numeric keys, and that you get the right " @ ~ # \ ? / and so forth. Otherwise, it might
be a pain. Click NEXT.
Now select mouse type. Try to find something that matches yours. Things marked "GENERIC"
and so forth are always a good bet for some mice that don't seem to fit any categories. If
your mouse has a wheel, then a recommend giving "Microsoft Intellimouse" a go, even if yours
isn't because the chances are that it will work. You might also want to click the "emulate
three buttons" tick box as well. A lot of functions in the XWindows interface expect a
three button mouse. Clicking both buttons together under 3 button mouse emulation kids
Linux on that you have pressed the third, middle button.
A screen will now say "WELCOME TO RED HAT LINUX" blah blah.... Just click NEXT.
Now, the next screen asks for an installation method. The thinking behind this is that
some people might have a virgin machine with no operating system on it at all, and also
might not understand concepts like partitioning, setting up mount points, etc.
However, we are all clever enough to understand that, so click CUSTOM.
If you are dual or multi booting with some other operating systems, ALWAYS choose a
custom install!!!!
Click NEXT, and then choose to "Manually partition with Disk Druid."
Highlight your existing Windows XP partition (which you said was FAT32) and click EDIT.
Give it a mount point like /mnt/winxp or something. You could have any mount point that
you like, but putting it in /mnt is proper UNIX convention.
Linux is reasonably FAT and FAT32 friendly, but not really NTFS friendly. It comes with
NTFS read-only support and experimental write support, but I don't recommend that. If you
are sharing any data partitions with Windows XP and Linux (like partitions containing media
like mp3s, games, etc) then use FAT32 please if possible. Or think up something else....
MAKE SURE That when you are editing the properties for your Windows XP FAT32
partition, that it has "Leave Unchanged" on file system preparation. Otherwise, it will
format your partition.
Click OK.
Now click NEW. Select a file system type of SWAP, and select the hard drive (in your case
probably just hda) you want the swap partition to be on.
Attention The writers of the 2.4 kernel recommend 2 X your physical RAM as swap
partition space for that kernel.
So if you have 256 MB, make a 512 MB partition. Click OK.
Now click NEW again. Make the mount point / (i.e. just "/" on its own!) and give it a
file system type of ext2 or ext3. ext3 is the new system with some better integrity, but
Drive Image software hasn't caught up to it yet, so I use ext2. If you don't use drive
image then there's no reason not to go with ext3. Tick the box that says "Fill to maximum
allowable size" so that disk druid shall automatically use the remainder of your HDD space
for the / partition, which is where you want everything to do.
When you get more experienced with Linux, you will actually consider spreading your Linux
installation over multiple partitions, but that's for the advanced class
