suse linux questions

1505 Views 3 Replies 2 Participants Last post by Cutter, Jul 23, 2004

bill

Discussion Starter · Jul 23, 2004

anyone using this? I have used red hat and mandreak (sp) but want to try this out for a while. I'm looking to dual boot with a winxp pro system. I know that winxp has to be installed first but am having a problem as to where to install linux. Boot from floppy?
I can set up two ways. 1. 1 hard drive 80 gig and let winxp have first 20gigs, next 10 gigs for linux and the last 50 gigs for my other files. 2. Install a second hard drive for linux (as a slave) I tried this first but when installing linux it kept trying to load to the main drive (over the xp) and the same when I tried linux first, XP tried to take over and wanted to reformat the drive.
I have hit a block and need more coffee...LOL
Thanks for any help.

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Cutter

· #2 · Jul 23, 2004

I have win on the master HD, and linux on the slave. I boot the linux side using a boot floppy. It may not be the prettiest solution, but it is simple, prevented alot of boot (MBR, etc) headaches, and it works good enough for my needs.

I know redhat had the GRUB boot manager that seemed to work pretty well. Have not had to install linux lately so I'm not sure of the latest tricks and gotchas.

But if I were to do it again, I would keep it simple and just create a boot floppy that points to the boot partition of the slave drive.. That keeps Windows out of the picture from the get-go.

Good luck, let me know how it turns out

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bill

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 23, 2004

Thanks

I was planning on the boot floppy but started thinking would this still allow me to switch from xp to linux without rebooting each time. I may just wait on the dual boot for now, I just wanted to save some space here. My wife is going to freak if I bring in any more cases...

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Cutter

· #4 · Jul 23, 2004

yeah I dont think you can switch OS's in realtime without a reboot. Now you can run a "virtual machine" session on XP and load linux inside the vm (that would solve any boot issues).. but that is not very good when considering performance. I think you need around a gig of memory just to bring it up.. and then working on linux through the vm is not very fast.

I hear your pain brethren about the boxes in the house.. I have a computer grave yard in my upstairs (empty) bedroom.. I brought home another computer to add to my cluster a few weeks ago.. I had to sacrifice some of the older junk boxes in order to get the thumbs up on the new box.

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