mandriva 2008 on SATA drive (solved)

[null]

My win2k machine has an IDE HD, 160GB, and a new SATA HD, also 160GB. The IDE drive is a few years old, and it has been "going bad". I have to reinstall win2k about every 2 weeks due to "drive errors". I bought the new SATA drive to replace it.

 

I have already partitioned (in win2k) the new sata drive into G: and H: partitions, both are ntfs. H: has all my data copied over from the old IDE drive. G: is still empty. I tried to reinstall win2k on the new sata drive G: partition... but of course win2k does not know what sata is... doesn't recognize any drive. I know I can do stuff like slipstream sp4, and also the sata drivers...

 

this got me to wondering about just installing mandriva 2008 on the G: partition of the new sata drive. Will 2008 recognize it?

There's a few windows progs I still use, such as CDex, winamp, Excel and Nero. I know there are linux equivalents... but I'm used to CDex and Nero and I like both progs. I don't mind using oo Calc to work with my excel files though. I own Nero Ultra Edition 6.0 and I would like to be able to use that under linux... oh well... (or can I?). My son likes to play Medal of Honor, Battlefield 1942 and half-life 2 on my windows machine also. Not sure if Mandriva 2008 has the capability to run those games.

 

If I got the 2008 mandriva, I would get the biggest and best powerpack. Any advice appreciated, expecially regarding sata installs, and running windows programs and games. (ie: what is cedega?).

 

thanks as always!

Edited November 22, 2007 by null

[Ixthusdan]

I have both sata and ide devices. 2008 got it all right the first time. My brother's computer has an ide drive and an sata drive, and I have to edit grub once for a proper id. It wants to locate the boot on the wrong drive but it installs fine and works fine after the edit.

[null]

I pulled the IDE drive, so there is just the SATA drive in it now.

 

After I install mandriva 2008 powerpack on it... I'd like to try sometime later to put win2k on it also... but I'm sure that would screw mandriva... I have always installed windows THEN linux.

 

nothing to lose by buying mandriva powerpack. What about the windows games questions in the first post? Thanks!

[AussieJohn]

If you plan to put Windows on your new Sata drive, you would be well advised to create a fat32 partition of the necessary Windows size as the FIRST Partition on the drive while doing the Mandriva install . This is because Windows creates all sorts of hassles if it does not have the Primary Master position so doing things this way you will be able to Install Windows later without problems. Linux doesn't care what partition it is on.

 

Create a partition for swap and one for / and one for /home. You do NOT need separate partitions for /var or /usr or what ever.

 

Cheers. John.

[null]

ok, will do. I know windows doesn't play well with others, that's why I always used to install win first, then linux.

I plan to buy another SATA drive soon... I like to have 2 HDs in my machines.

 

As mentioned before, my new SATA drive already has 2 partitions... G: & H:, both ntfs. The old IDE drive, which has been removed, was C: and D:

If I install mandriva, of course I would like to read & write my existing data (on H:), but it is ntfs. I can re-partition the empty G: space as Fat32. It is 30GB if I remember. I was planning to install both win2k and linux on G: but I think I'll wait till I buy another sata drive.

 

linux still doesn't write to ntfs, correct? Also, how does linux work with external usb hard drives (just for data)? I'd like to buy one.

Edited October 29, 2007 by null

[AussieJohn]

As I understand it. Linux can now read and write to ntsf. You need to install ....ntfs-3g and libntfs-3g.

To install them use MCC go to Software Management then into Look at installable software and install software package.

Type in ntfs into the Search box and click on search. Install from there.

 

Cheers. John.

Edited January 30, 2008 by AussieJohn

[null]

wow, interesting!! maybe I don't even need win2k anymore!

 

how does running win progs under linux work these days? as mentioned before, I like a couple of freebie win progs - winamp and CDex. I also like Nero (full "Ultra" version). I also play DVD movies with powerDVD, which came with my DVD burner.

 

Does anybody know about games such as medal of honor, battlefield 1942 and Half-Life 2 under linux?

 

Does linux have a good DVD movie player? I need a full-featured player, such as the windows ones. I'm 75% deaf, so I sometimes watch movies with Closed-captions turned on... The windows players all have that feature, also subtitles, and etc.

[Ixthusdan]

In Linux, k3b does everything that Nero can do.

The only games that play native in Linux are from ID Software, RTCW, Doom3 and Quake. Others need an emulator or a virtual machine. I had the original Half Life running with Wine once, but it was not stable. Sometimes it would launch and sometimes it would not. I understand that commercial emulators will work just fine.

[AussieJohn]

Winamp has two alternatives in Linux.........XMMS (similar to Winamp) (also my favourite) and Amarok.

CDEX (excellent) has GRIP (also excellent) and K3B plus a number of others.

I prefer Totem as a movie player but you also need to download a number of codecs and especially install the rpm package called libdvdcss to be able to play DVD Movies.

As good as Nero is (and it is good) I feel that K3B leaves it for dead ( just my and many others opinion).

 

Cheers. John.

[null]

well, I've used grip plenty, and CDex, I just like CDex better. Maybe I'm just more familiar with it. I didn't even need to mention winamp, I know linux has xmms (which I also like), so winamp isn't really a consideration. I never found k3b to do as much as nero... maybe that was just my k3b ignorance. I have used it plenty though, and I like it fine. I'm talking about Nero Ultra, which is the expensive boxed version.

 

what does cedega do? I read that you can run windows games under it. does it come with powerpack ?

 

what is the emulator of choice these days? I never messed with wine in previous years.... so I'm not familiar with emulators at all. Has it gotten better? Are emulators free?

 

edit: well, I guess since Ixthusdan called them, "commercial emulators", they must not be free...

Edited October 29, 2007 by null

[dude67]

what is the emulator of choice these days? I never messed with wine in previous years.... so I'm not familiar with emulators at all. Has it gotten better? Are emulators free?

 

edit: well, I guess since Ixthusdan called them, "commercial emulators", they must not be free...

The commercial emulator Ix was referring to would most likely be cedega. I personally don't have any experience with that nor do I know of any other commercial emulator (which doesn't mean there isn't any ). And I guess that cedega comes with Powerpack MDV2008.

 

There are a few free ones: VMWare and VirtualBox. There is also Wine which is able to run some windows programmes, but not perfectly and definitely not all of windows programmes. But they say that Wine is not really an emulator. This is taken from their homepage www.winehq.org: "Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs."

 

More on emulators here:

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showforum=20

[scarecrow]

First, Amarok is far and out the best audio player out there... period.

The second best is for windows (Foobar2000), and it works "fine" under wine... although the emulated sound you get may be fine for a computer, but for a media server it's surely lacking in fine detail. Winamp... uhmmm, what is that? :P

And finally, K3B is simply better than Nero for windoze. There is also Nero for Linux, which is simply MUCH worse than K3B. If you thing that a CD/DVD mastering and burning application must also play media, make the coffeee, encode video ande walk the dog, then you are certainly a Nero Suite guy and you will certainly disagree with my remarks above...

[null]

I'm going to install 2008 powerpack. Then I can check these things out myself.

 

I MAY attempt to install win2k sometime later, but if 2008 does whatever I need, maybe I can forego windows, for the first time ever.

[null]

I received my Mandriva powerpack 2008 dvd in the mail today. Will install it on my new sata drive.

 

In post #4, by John, he made some recomendations regarding partitioning in case I want to install windows later. Hope I can figure it out during install.

 

If not, I'll be back!

[Crashdamage]

If you install Win2k, be aware you MUST install it first. You cannot (at least not without considerable trouble) install it after Linux.

 

Now, I gotta disagree a bit with a couple of things AussieJohn said, though he's not really "wrong".

 

First, if you do install Win2k do not put it on a FAT32 partition. There's no reason to do it and plenty of reasons not to having to do with reliability, stability and speed, all of which NTFS is better at than FAT32. So create a NTFS partition for Win2k system files and a separate FAT32 partition if you want space to share files between Win/Linux. Reading NTFS from Linux is no problem, but I still wouldn't trust writing to NTFS for any critical work. YMMV.

 

Second, while he's right you don't NEED separate /usr, /var, etc. partitions, there are some very good reasons to do so and no disadvantage other than just a bit of time creating the partitions. Just give some careful thought to the partition sizes you will need. Besides /, /swap + /home, I always create at least /var + /usr, and sometimes /usr/local and /opt partitions. I learned very early why this is good practice and I feel it's particularly important to make /var separate. from /. Given enough memory, I would rather skip creating /swap than /var. A quick Google search should give plenty of info on why more partitions can be a Good Thing.

 

Finally, (scarecrow) I just don't understand why people keep trashing Nero for Linux, especially since v3 came out. As you can see in my sig, I use NeroLinux mainly for a consistent UI between Win/Linux and to offer support to a Linux-friendly company. While NeroLinux is not as all-comprehensive as Nero Ultra6 for Windoze (OK by me, simpler can be better), it's much cheaper and I've had zero problems using with it with 4-5 different DVD burners on several machines. I've used NeroLinux since v1.0, burned at least a couple hundred discs of all kinds by now with it and never burned a coaster that wasn't my own damn fault. Really been rock-solid for me. I haven't used kb3 for years, since I had Mandrake 8 (or even installed KDE) but I don't know what it might do that NeroLinux doesn't. It seems to have all the burning options I could ever need, and I need a lot.

Edited November 15, 2007 by Crashdamage