Help with installing Linux while keeping windows

[associates]

Hi,

how do i install Linux onto my windows XP machine without affecting my windows?

Honestly, i've never done partitioning before. I was wondering if anyone would be kind to show me a step-by-step guidelines as to partition my harddisk so that i can install linux as well as having all of my windows settings or data intact.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance

[GX1_Man]

Are you starting completely from scratch?

[Peccavi]

Use Partition Magic for partitioning and GRUB for dual booting.

For PM: http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

and

For GRUB http://www.webtree.ca/newlife/using_partition_magic_5.htm

[GX1_Man]

If you are using a blank hard drive, or one that could be, partition and put in Windows first. Then install Linux in the empy space not included in that. Linux will install it's own boot loader. Be sure and leave a fair amount of space available for each. Don't try to squeeze Linux in a 2 gig partition and expect to have an enjoyable experience.

By the way, if you can list your specific hardware and Linux distro we may be able to offer some advice, if your mind is not made up.

[associates]

Hi guys, thank you for your reply.

Yes, i'd like to install the Fedora linux onto my Fujitsu laptop that has 60G memory, 1.6GHz, 512M RAMs. It's got the windows XP already so i guess i need to create a new partition for Fedora. I need what's called dual boot system. However, my concern is that this is going to be my very first time to do any partition on a hard disk. Not sure if Fedora is smart enough to find itself some room in the hard disk without affecting windows.

My other concern is that say the fedora is already installed, then i need to reboot the computer. Can i get to choose which OS i want it to run on? or is it automatically boot up linux? Just to be careful about this(of course i'll make a backup copy of my important files before getting down into this business).

Thank you very much in advance and look forward to hearing from you.

[GX1_Man]

Fedora will have it's own boot loader. You will get a screen showing which operating system you want to load.

If your hard disk is all one big partition as it usually is, then you will either need to reload windows after making the hard drive into a smaller partition, leaving room for Linux in the empty space OR you need to use some kind of partition management software such as Partition Magic, etc. I don't remember if Fedora has this built in (QTPartEd o womething similar).

How did you decide on Fedora? Some of those distributions have Live CD so that you can take it for a test spin first and see if everything is compatible. As manufacturer's are honed in to the Windows audience sometimes that CAN be a problem.

Have you ever run Linux before? You may want to try the Linspire 5.0 Live CD a try. It is the most Windows like. You may also want to look at Knoppix. They just boot from your CDROM without writing anything to the hard drive.


http://iso.linuxquestions.org/distro.php?distro=58


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