Guest BKSea Posted January 31, 2003 Report Share Posted January 31, 2003 Hi, I know this is probably a stupid question, but before I download or purchase Mandrake I would like to know the answer. I have two hard drives. Master runs XP and will continue to. The slave is a 20 gb hard drive and I want to install Mandrake on that. Can Mandrake do this installation without any additional software? Is it the basic install option or an advances one... Will I be able to boot into either operating system? and on another note, are there any opinions of Lindows and whether that is worth a look??? Thanks, Brian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illogic-al Posted January 31, 2003 Report Share Posted January 31, 2003 To answer your last question first, i think that most people here would tell you that Lindows is the demon-spawn and to stay as far away from it as possible. It's mostly because of a philosophical difference why the linux community has deemed lindows a sort of black sheep. I personally think it's the devil-spawn that you should stay as far away from as possible because of its price. At $99 a pop I could get a home version of XP or a professional upgrade of XP. To answer your other questions: yes the basic or the advanced yes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted January 31, 2003 Report Share Posted January 31, 2003 No additional software needed. Mandrake will provide a bootloader (Lilo) so you can choose which OS to load. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BKSea Posted January 31, 2003 Report Share Posted January 31, 2003 But there is abviously going to be a huge learning curve..... I'm brand new, so it won't be easy, but what the heck.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jglen490 Posted January 31, 2003 Report Share Posted January 31, 2003 Don't be afraid of the learning curve. It really is no higher nor steeper than the learning curve on any OS. Just approach Linux on its own merits -- I know the comparisons will be inevitable, I did 'em too. As a BTW, use the "Expert" install mode when Mandrake prompts you. It really isn't that much more difficult. That gives you more control over the whole process while still presenting very good default values. Pay very close attention to the partitioning process. You'll do just fine!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clevedonal Posted February 23, 2003 Report Share Posted February 23, 2003 I have a 3cd pack Mandrake 9.0, Athlon1300/256 ram/46gb... currently running Win98SE, just bought a 40gb drive and would like to install Mandrake on the new drive to play and learn as wife wont let me dump Bill's baby. I am totally unfamiliar with dual booting, and only have looked at ML9 very briefly.... how much trouble might i have, and any pitfalls? All advice thankfully welcomed.... al :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted February 23, 2003 Report Share Posted February 23, 2003 The answers given to the first set of questions also apply to a dual boot on one drive. I always recommend that you select expert install to give you complete contol of the partitioning and package selection. Linux will recognize your Windows install and include it in the Linux boot program, Lilo or Grub are the two linux booters which you select near the end of the install. Grub is viewed as the better of the two although it is really a question of personal taste. Partition your disk into "/" root, /usr, /home, /var and swap. You can eliminate separate partitions for /usr and /var. /usr is where most of your usr programs go and /var is for log files. Many people separate these for convenience and in the the case of /var, it is to stop runaway log files from overwriting part of root. /home is separated because that is where all of your personal preference files are stored and if you are forced to reinstall or upgrade to a new version you do not need to format it preserving your settings. There are several other recent messages on this topic posted you could look at for more information. If you have not already done so, I suggest you download and read the first three and the fifth file from here: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/fdoc.php3 . You can get more partitioning information from the old docs section at the top of this page in the Install section. Make sure you have a formatted empty floppy to make a rescue disk when the system asks for it. This is critical if you should be unable to boot with the boot loader. Once you complete your install and have Linux up and running there are may more doc files under the Documention section of your main menu. As far as Lindows is concerned...I haven't and won't be looking at it. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clevedonal Posted February 23, 2003 Report Share Posted February 23, 2003 Thanks Counterspy, it is my intention to use all of my new drive for Mandrake, (that is reason for purchase) and keep Win & Mandrake on two completely separate drives, utilising the bootloader, but, never having 'bootloaded' before and having only recently installed windows (again), i'd obviously prefer if each left the other alone :roll: now that win has all its patches and security updates installed (again). My wife will be less than happy if my 'experimenting' goes T-U. al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest duir66 Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 I recently had this issue recently. http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...201bd0ef30d2166 I'd make the Win HD primary slave (IMHO) but it should still work if you left it as master. When you install ML, it will write to the MBR of the master (thus why I suggest you make the Win HD a slave). I think ML chooses lilo bootloader by default. Counterspy's partition info is right on (I've also seen the inclusion of a 5 - 10 mb tmp partition at end of drive for just in case.) /usr & /var aren't really necessary. If you decide to expert partition, make sure that your swap file is double the size of the amount of your RAM up to 512 MB. In other words, the swap doesn't need to be larger than 512MB. (Ex: 128MB RAM = 256MB HD Swap, 256RAM = 512MB HD Swap, 384RAM still = 512MB Swap, etc,) On your next boot you will have about 10sec to choose between ML & Win. Win will be called /mnt/windows. I guess it goes without saying, Ghost your Win drive just in case. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clevedonal Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 Thanks Duir.... I'll try to make sure that i'm not going to lose anything irreplacable, as i'll suffer if i trash my other halfs creations! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest duir66 Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 Let us know how it works out for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clevedonal Posted March 12, 2003 Report Share Posted March 12, 2003 My thanks to counterspy, and to duir for their words of wisdom and encouragement - i bit the bullet, and slipped the penguin onto my new drive, and all seems well. :D Though my motherboard AV is complaining. My basic hardware seems ok, and internet access through router/cable modem is fine. I've not set up printer/scanner/cameras yet.... and noseguy does not co-operate! :roll: I will persevere, and may well seek further advice regarding AV+firewall info if anyone might point me? Many thanks folks! al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandriva-user Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Well I have xp on 50gb, win98 and linux on 120 gb it works fine on my computer. Lilo can handl that no problemo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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