Easiest Linux to install on WinXP machine?

[bazzman]

OK been thinking about installing Linux on my WinXP machine but I am wondering if any installs of Linux will partition the Hard Drive and can then be installed on the new partition. Also can they then be multi booted?

Cheers

[LordCrush]

Yes and yes

Basic Linux installation questions - you should look at the readme and FAQs of your Linux Distribution

... and dont forget the backups

[bazzman]

Thx LCrush.

Would you recommend any particular version of Linux that is the easiest to do this?

[LordCrush]

Hmm i only know a bit about the german SUSE Linux and have not tried any other distributions now. SUSE has a nice Setup, but i never tried to do a install with multi-boot.

And... on the actual version 8.2 i was not able to complie a working SEQ ... seems to be a problem with the newer versions of autoconf in that version.

I think most people here use Red Hat ...

[BrianW]

might look into Mandrake, its the version of Linux i've been using with Gnome as the interface
each person has their opinions and like different things, so you might just want to look around
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/

also i believe Slackware is one of the oldest distributions out there, and quite a few ppl i know use it, thers also quite a few IRC chanels for discusion of the different copies of linux, just have to look around for them
http://www.slackware.com/

and of course... cant forget
http://www.linux.com/

[suseuser7341]

Good to know LordCrush, will keep me from updating my SuSE 8.1

[Alfred]

If you want what some think is the simplest to install for both the OS and seq.... red hat

If you want the one that will require a lot of time (relative to your cpu speed) but will result in the fastest linux - gentoo linux.

My two cents.

[LordCrush]

Originally posted by suseuser7341
Good to know LordCrush, will keep me from updating my SuSE 8.1

Yep i have it now compiling, but it produces masses of warnings and then only segfaults

My "productive" SEQ runs on a patched SUSE 7.3

[Broseq]

Some quick tips for you from the school of hard knocks. I triple boot, Win98SE, WinXP and Mandrake 9.0.

Install 98 first, then XP and then Linux, it seems to work best.

** When Linux asks you where you want to put it's boot info, tell it to place it at the beginning of the Linux partition. If you chose the beginning of the drive you will have issues making the Win partitions bootable again.

BootMagic works great as a boot controller for this type of setup.

I used PartitionMagic running from the Win98 partition to pre-partition the XP and Linux space and then told both installs to use the space that was provided for it.

[fryfrog]

The boot managers found in Win2k/XP and in Linux should work just fine. Lilo and Grub both work very well. I would suggest the order mentioned above, Windows then Linux. Redhat and Mandrake should both easily tell you have windows already installed and probably make entries for lilo or grub, which ever boot loader you choose. If not, you may have to learn some lilo / grub to get it working. When I was dual booting, I always let lilo/grub put itself into the mbr, not forcing it to just stick itself on its own little partition... if that makes sense

[Zeppo]

Don't support that French-made Mandrake piece of crap.
Get a pure RedHat distro.
Or SuSe.
Or Slackware.
Or Gentoo.
Or anything else.....

[BrianW]

thanks for informing me zeppo didnt know it was french /beg-forgiveness

atm i'm running a copy of Slackware, and going to download a copy of RH9 that i'm growing fond(sp) of

[bazzman]

Thx for all the info folks. Guess I will try RH9 first then

I like the sound of easy.

I tried the Windows version and it seemed ok. Any major differences between the 2 btw?

[fryfrog]

thats totally retarded. all versions of linux are programmed by people all over the world. just because mandrake (one distribution) was put together by a french company means nothing. if you truely are avoiding the distro because it has some ties to france... i would assume that you also avoid ANY software that has a french author, co-author or any sort of contribution by a french person? because otherwise, what is the point. mandrake is just a collection of applications written by a myrid of people (some of them french i bet!).

reminds me of that stupid christian linux distro that refused to use any software written by gay people, renamed all "demonic" references and generally made a retarded version of linux.

[pagan]

If you are a complete linux noob like myself I found Redhat 8 to be very sweet. Unless you count the few months i had freeBSD and nearly went MAD; my extent of unix knowledge is just what I know from using shells I found Redhat 8 to be very easy.

Easy as WIN2k to install. KDE is an easy to use GUI. All of my ancient hardware was autodetected and installed. Just do a complete install of every package and all you will have to do is follow the instructions for installing SEQ to get it up and running.

just my 2 cents on this matter