Question about dual booting winxp pro and linux

E

erehwon6811

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
493
I have been wanting to make a dual boot machine for a while now. I spent the last several days backing everything up and reformated the entire thing. My question is how should I partition it and what file system should I use. I have a 40 and an 80 gig hard drive. I've heard that linux has some issues with the NTFS file system. I was wanting to know if linux can run on NTFS or can NTFS and a FAT partition can exist on the same disk? I'm planing on installing Fedora linux. My school uses redhat on some of their computers and I thought I would start of learning something close.

My plan so far:
1st disk
20 gig Windows system partition
20 gig LInux system partition

2nd disk
40 gig Games & apps part (need atleast 20 gig since UT2k4 and HL2 going on)
20 some gigs for Data
 
Linux will not run on NTFS. It can read NTFS partitions, but cannot write(there is an experimental driver to write to NTFS, but you will corrupt your partition if you use it, so don't).

I'd say make the first disk a 20 gig NTFS partition for booting Windows, and the other 20GB ext2/ext3/reiserfs(whichever you choose). Then make the second disk with fat32 partitions, so both Windows and linux can read and write to it. That's what I did when I dual booted back in the day, and it worked fine. The down side to fat32 is there are no permissions on the FS so the chance to destroy the partition is a bit greater, espicially in linux.
 
sandmanx pretty much nailed it. The setup you have is ok (if you change some of the filesystems around) my current setup is:

80gb drive booting WinXP pro
20gb drive booting Slackware Linux

But I can access common files (documents, mp3s, images etc) that are on my XP drive (NTFS) from my Linux drive (ext2) by simply mounting the XP drive in linux...
 
Would it be easier to just install fedora on my other computer and have a pure linux box? My other computer is an 800 mhz Via board. Is it true that linux has problems with wireless cards? My second comp is connected to our wireless network and my main one to the wired network. I'd like to avoid any extra problems.
 
yeah, running a pure linux box would simplify things greatly. i usually only deal with dual boot when i need my laptop running linux as well as windows.

as for wireless cards.... if all you need to do is connect to the internet, no, linux (especially fedora) has great native support for most networking devices, including wireless.

if you're looking to run some more specialized apps, like kizmet or air snort, then you will most likly have to deal with driver patching for your linux wirless drivers. most wireless card manufacturers seem to include linux drivers on their support pages that are excatly the same ones included with the lastest linux builds anyhow.
 
there are also progs out there that will allow you to install an operating system into virtual memory. Microsoft has one free for trial period.


phas3d
 
if you've already reformatted everything, then all you have left is easy
first, install windows, THEN install linux
if you do it linux then windows, your MBR will be all fucked up from windows and you'll have to load a linux livecd to fix it (pretty simple but a pain none the less)

wireless support is overall great, and if you can't find a native linux driver there's always ndiswrapper which tries to use windows drivers (works for all the devices listed on their page, which is a lot)

once you partition your hard drive, each partition can have it's own file system. aka your 80 gig can be split into 60 (winxp ntfs) and 20 (linux reiserfs or xfs or ext3 or reiser4 if you feel like livin on the edge - very worth it, fedora doesn't support it natively). then your 40 gig drive can be FAT32 for sharing data between linux and windows (or ext3, which windows can read if you install ext2ifs).
just a word of note on file sharing - linux is VERY friendly about it, windows is NOT. so if in doubt, do it the windows way and linux will be able to deal with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top