Ready to make the transition from Windows to Linux

Do a dual install and enjoy the best of both worlds. The boot manager of your choice (Linux comes with LILO and Grub) will allow you to switch between the two.

You can buy a new hard drive and not have to worry about the dual install on one drive. Just switch the boot drive when you boot up. Your present windows drive will be relatively safe from changes.

Or just find a used box for $100 and throw linux on that with a KVM switcher to switch back and forth between the two. That way you can learn how to network the two and test apache,php etc from a second machine with a simple keyboard key combination.

Thanks for that. It is too late for the first, unless I uninstall XP. But isn't it too late for using two drives also, unless I uninstall and reinstall XP, as two different OS's will be in play? I thought that that solution would require a reconfiguration and start from scratch.

I have another box but the processor is too slow and motherboard too limited. Don't want to put anything into that.

I guess I am showing my ignorance here. Thus, the reason for my feeling like I don't know how to approach this. Because, I don't.

It isn't too late if Windows is already on your machine. It is preferable if you want Windows and Linux.

When you boot up your computer it uses the boot section of the hard drive to find out where the operating system is. Only one Operating system can run at the same time. (There is some software that allows you to run more than one in virtual machines but that is a seperate issue.)
You can install more than one operating system on a hard drive. What happens is it puts a boot loader in the boot section that allows you to choose which OS to load. Each OS is then put in a seperate virtual drive section of the hard drive. Linux usually suggests that Windows is loaded first since Windows will rewrite the boot sector to only start up with Windows and won't play well with others. Linux can recognize Windows drives but Windows won't recognize Linux drives.

When it comes to using seperate drives, most machines allow you to choose which hard drive is your boot drive. Older machines, you have to manually go change the drive in setup in the bios. Many newer machines allow you decide the drive as the machine is starting up. They also allow you to use a USB drive to boot. You can set up a second hard drive and then change that to the boot drive in the bios and fire it up with Linux in the CD drive. (I would suggest you actually disconnect your Windows drive so you don't accidently load Linux on that drive.)

The nice thing about doing it on a seperate drive is you can reinstall easily with different Linux installs as you try to find the one that works best for you. If you use a seperate drive for Linux you don't have to worry about screwing up your present working Windows installation which you will probably need to access the internet until you finally get a working linux.

PC Mag did a nice article on installing Linux on a windows Machine a few years ago. Let me see if I can find it in archives somewhere.

Here is a more recent article on Linux install from PC Mag

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1854005,00.asp

The one I saw a couple of years ago was about using Mandrake and dealt with installing second OS. This one uses Redhat and just linux on the drive.

Here is the earlier article.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdpcm/is_200112/ai_ziff18524#continue

The version of linux talked about is a few years out of date but some helpful information. Linux should recognize any existing partitions on your hard drive and ask you how you want to deal with them if you are adding to an XP drive.

parados,

Thanks so much for doing that sleuthing for the articles. I will digest them at leisure before my next question.

I think that, for starters, it would be better for me to have both WIndows XP and Linux (I was thinking about using the Linspire distribution) on the same hard drive. From what you said above, it appears that there is no big deal about downloading any Linux flavor: that information already configured on the drive will make sure that it is put into a separate partition. Am I correct about this?

I have tried to get a book for my local library, but it is too new and they can't even get it under interlibrary loan:

"Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux"
or Marcel Gagne's "Moving to Linux: KIss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye"

What do you think of my choice of Linspire?

Also, just read Fred Langa's most recent free version of his newsletter at:

http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-01-09.htm

where he, and a questioner, talk a little about "community-built virtual machines":

"The "community-built virtual machines" are, in essence, a complete, fully-set-up PC, emulated entirely in software, that runs inside your current operating system:

The VMware community continues to create downloadable virtual machines that run in VMware Workstation and the free VMware Player. Three new virtual machines contain the OpenACS web application toolkit, the IPCop firewall, and the Sguil network analyst console. Other new virtual machines contain distributions of Kubuntu, Debian, Fedora Core 4 and 5, FreeBSD, and KDE 3.5 on SUSE....

The downloadable virtual PCs are available at http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/vm/

You can download and use these virtual machines just as if they were a normal, stand-alone PC."

What do you think about that idea?

I've never used Linspire so can't comment too much on it.

The beauty of using Linux is you can fail repeatedly and learn while failing. It took 3 distros to try to find one that recognized my SATA drive when loading. But then it took me weeks of searching to try to get that distro tweaked to properly hotplug my USB drive.

As long as you protect your windows drive from destruction it makes it easy to start over. I suggest using a second drive if you can get one cheap and easy. Once you load Linux on a windows drive it takes some work to go back to just Windows on that drive because of the partitioning.

Linspire - dunno ..... try and do a little looking around - you didn't buy it did you?
SuSe
and I'll get back more tonight

SuSe has a CD version. It's pretty cool. You can boot directly from the CD. It will tell you quickly if SuSe can recognize all your hardware. It's also an easy way to do a trial run on Linux. You can't do a lot of tweaking but it gives you the basics of Linux.

here's a great link for researching linux distrubtions link

No, I have bought nothing.

I have a second, and third, drive. But would I not have to lose everything on the Windows drive, and reinstall windows, to configure the box with two drives using two different OS's?

But that is something else that concerns me. I have already lost my 4 in 1 scanner-printer thingy to the software manufacturer not wishing to rewrite code when Windows issued SP2 for XP.

I know that some peripherals can't as yet run on a Linux platform. And the older peripherals, like mine, may never be able to do so.

Another important consideration for me, or anyone.

Husker,
I don't have the basic knowledge of open source with which to evaluate distros for my use. I checked out the site thoroughly, and Linspire appears to be fairly new, with SuSE very popular. Their disc is certainly amongst the most expensive.

Would I not want to find out whether a particular distro will run with my peripherals before I invest any time and energy in a download or install from CD?

Parados,

You said:

"The beauty of using Linux is you can fail repeatedly and learn while failing. It took 3 distros to try to find one that recognized my SATA drive when loading. But then it took me weeks of searching to try to get that distro tweaked to properly hotplug my USB drive."

Is that kind of trial and error really necessary? I don't know that I am up to that.

Linux isn't really an out of the box program, particularly if you have old peripherals or state of the art ones. The drivers are probably out there for them but they will require you to learn how to download and install them.

It seems you are starting from a very basic point here sumac.

1.) There is no need to buy linux. You can download it for free which every linux distro is required to do because it is open source. When you buy linux you are buying some level of support, 2 phone hours or 30 days unlimited. Free downloads come with no support unless you pay by the minute.

2.) A computer has a boot drive and secondary drives. You can put a different OS on each drive and then by simply changing the boot drive in the bios you get it to use a different drive and the different OS. The linux drive will see the Windows drive as a secondary drive. Windows will see the linux drive as an unformatted drive. You can also physically remove and add the drives based on the OS you wish to use. It's cumbersome but easy enough to do.

3.) Linux is open source. There are a lot of people writing the code for it. It is impossible to locate it all in one spot. The major linux distros try to implement parts of it as soon as it is tested enough but they don't all have the same parts and probably not all the required drivers for you.

4.) Because it is open source you can find free programs to do just about anything you want on Linux. Because they are free they don't come with much technical support if any. That means you have to search for the answers when it doesn't work right the first time.

Linux is getting better all the time but it still might require you to get under the hood. If you never did any simple programming or messed around in DOS you might feel overwhelmed. There are a lot of tutorials out there that explain things pretty well but most assume some level of understanding of Linux. There are also some great Linux help forums but again they will expect you to have some basic knowledge. A lot of them will expect you to be able to do command line programming.

If you aren't afraid of learning new things and don't want a computer to work right the first time then go for it. If you are easily frustrated then Linux is probably not the system for you.

I tend to dig a little deeper because I want to know why it works, not just that it works.

I suggest you spend a little time browsing through one of the linux forums. Linuxforum.com is one I have spent time on. You can probably just do a search for "newbie" or "new to linux" and you will get a lot of questions that people that consider themselves beginners have asked. It will be like learning a new language with the terms and specifics talked about.

Linux is always updating. My last install was SuSe 9.1. (Suse finally did a patch for the hotplug problems.) Each update tends to make it easier. Just be prepared to have to work around something you can't get to work the way you want it to. But hey, I have to do that in windows. Many people claim that everything works perfectly for them on a linux install. It might for you.

The biggest thing is protect yourself before you try it. Back up your Windows drive and put linux on a different drive. (I would suggest removing the windows drive to eliminate any chance of overwriting by error.) If you overwrite the wrong thing and don't have it backed up, you probably can't recover from it.

Oh, and most older peripherals probably have a drive somewhere for Linux. Someone else with linux probably had to make theirs work and wrote something. It may be hard to track down and not easy to configure but it will be out there. Linux hasn't changed much in the nuts and bolts area so a driver from 8 years ago should still work on present Linux.

parados,

I want to thank you very much for the obvious time and effort you expended in trying to help me come to terms with some of my basic issues.

It is clear that I am nowhere near ready to transition to anything. And maybe I will never completely give up on Windows, but work with one or the other. It is clear to me that putting a second drive in the box is the best way to go.

Many decades ago I fooled around a little in Fortran IV and BASIC, but have forgotten everything. I avoided learning anything about DOS like it was the plague because I knew that I really didn't have to.

So I have a great deal of learning to do before I even begin to think about downloading anything. And yes, I realize that I needn't buy.

You have given me much to chew on. Again, many thanks.