Linux Help!

Hi guys,

Disclaimer: I am a complete novice and I will not understand any slang you guys use!

However, I want to get into Linux as I can't stand Vista and I only really use my laptop for email, 'net and statistics.

I have a new Dell M3400 coming in pretty soon and I want run both XP and Ubuntu on it. I have read the guides and it seems straight forward enough however I don't really get this 'partition' thing (I only used to C:\ and \ drives...)

What does this mean?

Also, I don't want to effect XP (it comes pre-installed), will installing ubuntu effect this?

Secondly, I am giving my old laptop to my mother. I was going to put on LinuxMint as it seems pretty user friendly and she will only use it for typing out stuff (I would reinstall XP but I don't have the disks and the PC is pretty screwed at the moment, hence the reformat)

How can I set it so that the Linux Install reformats the drive?

thanks!!

Z

Sherifu

You may want to set up something like this:

simple


harder

The second one looks better.. as I imagine that I will be sharing data between the two OS'....

If worse comes to worse I will get some linux head mates to help me out..

Edit - does this require an XP reinstall?

Sherifu

I'd use GParted, it's on the Ubuntu cd to shrink xp to something as above and then create the partitions like you want. It should mean you won't have to reinstall xp, but it will probably need a disk check on next boot. Also you will need to add the xp install to the Ubuntu boot loader, relatively easy.

Further reading-

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partitioning
http://www.hezardastan.org/breezy_xp_dualboot/en/

Capt'n Midnight

Defrag XP first so all the files are at the start of the disk
then use gparted to shrink the partition - to be on the safe side don't drop more than 50% at a time (may take two or three steps)
reboot into XP - it will do a disk check because ntfsresize told it too and then reboot normally
now back into ubuntu and install into the largest contiguous free space, it'll add XP to the boot menu

as for shared data , no point in using Fat32
you can get ext3 drivers for XP - www.fs-driver.org
and ubuntu can read/write to NTFS

ext3??

Is there any issues with programs being installed after?

I presume both Linux/XP can see/load files in the 'shared' partition of the drive.

From chatting with a well informed mate, he advised Linux Mint on both PCs.. will that cause any extra hassle?

Sherifu

No, it's mostly Ubuntu at the core.

AndrewMc

Deleted User wrote: »

ext3??

Where Windows uses FAT32 or NTFS filesystems, Linux systems most commonly use one called ext3. (There are others like ReiserFS and XFS, too, but don't worry about that for now!)

Capt'n Midnight

In the past NTFS support by opensource OS's was poor, because Microsoft didn't release the information about it and there were chances of data loss so in the past the advice was use it read only. Since then better drivers have been written and most modern opensource OS's can read/write to NTFS quite happily.

EXT3 is well documented so no problem using the drivers in windows, you can even have your swap file on EXT3, you just can't boot windows off it. NB. it doesn't like being defragmented but then again is less likely to need a defrag.

FAT32 is the old windows 95 file system which has some limits for partition size depending on OS and there is a hard file size limit of 4GB which is annoying if you use DVD's or disk images or filesystem backups. FAT32 is also the most breakable of the filesystems and the most fixable.
At this stage really only needed if you use 95/98/ME or floppy based utils

Cheers - so I can just leave it as NTFS?

Capt'n Midnight

Deleted User wrote: »

Cheers - so I can just leave it as NTFS?

Linux won't install on NTFS*
so you have to shrink the NTFS partition to leave space for linux

both windows and linux will write to ext3

*you can copy a live CD image to an ntfs partition and mount it with loadlin - not a proper install though

Snowbat

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

both windows and linux will write to ext3

Watch out for a possible issue in upcoming distro releases - the latest mke2fs will create new filesystems with 256 byte inodes and the ext_attr feature flag by default. Apparently this breaks current versions of many Windows ext2/3 drivers and utilities (ifs, ext2fsd and ufsexplorer were mentioned):
http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2008-03/msg00739.php

(Cooker is a mailing list for developers and testers of Alpha / Beta / Release Candidates of Mandriva Linux. RC2 of Mandriva 2008.1 (Spring) is due next week)

cmo

Deleted User wrote: »

The second one looks better.. as I imagine that I will be sharing data between the two OS'....

If worse comes to worse I will get some linux head mates to help me out..

Edit - does this require an XP reinstall?

To share data using ntfs lookup the ntfs-3g system which allows you to write to the ntfs partition from Linux. Suse uses this but Im not sure about Ubuntu.

ioctl

cmo wrote: »

To share data using ntfs lookup the ntfs-3g system which allows you to write to the ntfs partition from Linux. Suse uses this but Im not sure about Ubuntu.

The utility is in the main Ubuntu repositories as well. I haven't had any issues with it.