[LBo] dual-boot system

[Emen Zhao]

Thanks All for your sage advice! I will keep you updated should any problem
raise its ugly head. :-)


On 11/30/06, Brice Hunt <shoalcreek5 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jeff Grant wrote:
> > Emen Zhao wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Friends,
> >>
> >> I am asked to install a dual-boot system - Redhat Enterprise Edition 3
> and
> >> WXP... (a name I hesitate to say here, but hey it is just work, right?
> >> ;-)).
> >> Anyone please give some suggestion or warnings, etc I should prepare
> and
> >> watch out for this work. Thanks in advance for your help!
> >>
> >
> > - Update the BIOS ASAP since most PC's only allow M$/XP to use BIOS
> > updates lately.
> >
> If he's going to dual boot, this really doesn't matter as he can boot
> into Windows any time to do a BIOS update. Furthermore, Intel, Asus, and
> many other popular motherboard manufacturers offer alternate ways of
> updating BIOS (e.g. image for bootable DOS floppy) that will update the
> BIOS without Windows.
> > - Backup everything if this is an existing XP install.
> > - Make an extra empty partition for XP and RH to share, and make it
> > FAT32, not NTFS.
> > - Use gparted to re-size partitions if need be:
> >
> > http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
> >
> > - Don't put all Linux filesystems on one partition - split up partitions
> > something like:
> >
> > 20GB WINXP (NTFS)
> > 64MB /boot (ext3)
> > 512MB <swap>
> > 20GB / (ext3)
> > 20GB /home (ext3)
> > 20GB /share (FAT32)
> >
> > The last partition being the shared space for both OS's. Keep in mind,
> > this is just an example layout. Don't forget to make sure that your
> > kernel supports FAT32, and *be careful* if you decide to add in Linux
> > kernel support for NTFS - read/write support on NTFS using Linux can be
> > hazardous!
> >
> Mostly agreed (although NTFS read/write support is much improved over
> even 1 year ago).
> > - Always install XP first, so that it uses it's native partitioning
> > tools, etc.
> > - Use GRUB as your dual-boot manager - it will save you countless hours
> > of headache.
> >
> Agreed.  XP Pro will install itself into a dual-boot configuration, but
> it will use its own (less configurable) boot manager. Installing XP
> first allows you to use Grub (I believe Grub is currently the default in
> RHEL). Once you learn how to configure and use Grub, you can do some
> really neat things with it.
> > - If you're a Linux newbie, dump X (GUI) in favor of CLI (command line).
> > CLI is infinitely more powerful.
> >
> If you want to be productive quickly and have never used text-based
> tools before, then you can ignore this advice. If you're doing this
> dual-boot setup for a customer, then you'll also want to ignore this
> advice. On the other hand, if you really want to learn Linux and have
> the time and computer to spare, you can learn a lot by going straight
> CLI for awhile. Anyhow, don't go and install some distro (like Ubuntu
> and its variants) that limits your CLI capabilities.  (Soon, I'm going
> to install Kubuntu in my mother's computer because she never uses the
> command line anyway. She's currently using Suse 10.0.)  Red Hat
> Enterprise 3 should be an excellent choice to learn on (and its install
> routine should be fairly easy to follow--even in a dual boot).
>
> Brice Hunt
> --new to the list, have used Linux since 2001.
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