i have winXP and was thinking of putting mandrake linux 8.1 or 8.2 when it comes out. Is it possible to do this? i know you can do duel boots. What i want to do is as follows. I will have 3HD, 2 are 120GB each and the last is 30GB. On one of the 120GB will be WinXP and on the other 120GB will be stuff. On the 30GB one i want to put Linux. I have never used linux but i really want to. 1)can i duel boot it and get rid of Linux if i dont want it? 2) what are some good links to books and what not on Linux? 3) is linux complicated to install and do things in? Thank you

note. u have to install the microsoft os first. but then "dual boot" does not make problems. use lilo as bootloader. have a lot of fun ....

netzzwerg is right, you have to install the Microsoft OS first, but under XP you can use the NT boot loader, which in my opinion is more asthetically pleasing and easier to use. You can easily do this by reading and writing the MBR of your first HD using a program called BOOT.exe off of a DOS boot floppy. See this web site: http://www.computing.net/howto/advanced/linuxnt/

Definitely a good idea to have LILO be the MBR. I have given the below reply elsewhere to suggestions to instead boot Linux from the Windows boot loader: In case you care... I myself would like to load XP from Lilo and not the other way around ( I have seen the trick to add the lilo generated boot sector to c:\boot.ini. I guess this would work but I'd prefer Lilo to start first -- I just enjoy Microsoft coming second! :-)) Having LILO as the MBR requires having BOTH the Linux kernel _and_ the Windows XP kernel _below_ the 1024 cylinder on the harddisk. My partitioning (see below) achieves this. I tried it both ways, both with the C:\boot.ini thing _and_ with LILO in the MBR. Turned out LILO MBR worked but that booting Linux from C:\boot.ini didn't, for me. _______ Kind of surprising considering all the previous struggle I had had getting LILO in the MBR to boot XP. All I know is I recognised a lot of the struggles people have been writing about, and suddenly they were gone and things just worked again as it always have in the past with MSDOS 6.2 / Win 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, NT, Windows 2000 and now Windows XP. I have done my dual boot strategy with them all, and it is a sound -- if tedious -- technuiqe. Nowadays I try to force the hardware supplier to place the OS at cylinders 2 to 1023, counting from 0 -- or if he counts from 1, at cylinders 3 to 1024. That way, even if I have to reorder the partition numbering in the partition table in the MBR manually -- which I have written a little shell script using dd for -- I can always either from Linux or from XP's rescue system fix c:\boot.ini afterwards AS LONG AS I DO IT BEFORE ACTIVATING THE OS FOR THE FIRST TIME .. i.e. before ever running it. Then I run a Linux rescue CD with a script of mine to set up partitions and filesystems. This is my general layout: Disk /dev/hda: 9729 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0 Dev__Boot_Start__End_#cyls__#blocks___Id__System______Mountpoint hda1_________0+____1____2-____16033+__83__Linux_______/boot hda2___*_____2+_1023_1022-__8209183+___b__Win95_FAT32_/C__[C:] hda3______1024__2047_1024___8225280____b__Win95_FAT32_/G__[G:] hda4______2048__9728_7681__61697632+___f__Win95_Ext'd_(LBA) hda5______2048+_3071_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/images hda6______3072+_4095_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/cdmaster hda7______4096+_4195__100-___803218+__82__Linux_swap hda8______4196+_4261___66-___530113+__83__Linux_______/ hda9______4262+_5285_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/usr hda10_____5286+_5417__132-__1060258+__83__Linux_______/var hda11_____5418+_6441_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/opt hda12_____6442+_7337__896-__7197088+__83__Linux_______/home hda13_____7338+_7475__138-__1108453+__83__Linux_______/tmp hda14_____7476+_9728_2253-_18097191____b__Win95_FAT32_/F__[F:] (The "-" and "+" means subtract or add 512 byte from the cylinder boundary -- in the space beween there are partition tables, boot records and stuff. I use sfdisk to see all this info. And for all my formatting.) Anyway, this is my working lilo.conf: #boot = /dev/fd0 boot = /dev/hda vga = 771 read-only menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg lba32 prompt #timeout = 80 timeout = 300 message = /boot/message default = XP image = /boot/vmlinuz append = "disableapic hdc=scsi hdd=scsi" label = linux root = /dev/hda8 initrd = /boot/initrd image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse append = "disableapic hdc=scsi hdd=scsi" label = suse root = /dev/hda8 initrd = /boot/initrd.suse optional image = /boot/memtest.bin label = memtest86 #image = /boot/ORIGINALMBR other = /dev/hda2 change automatic optional label = XP table = /dev/hda loader = /boot/chain.b Take care, Leif_Erlingsson______________+46-70-447-8271_____+46-8-778-5038 Katrinebergsvagen_70 146_50__Tullinge,__Sweden____leif@lege.com_______http://lege.com ech`echo unli|tr il oc|sed 'su\([su]\)\([on]\)uo li\2\1x is u'`ol