Hello, I currently have Windows XP pro installed on a 40GB partition (NTFS) of an 80 GB hardrive. I would like to install Linux on the empty partition. I have two questions.

1. Which version of Linux would be compatible with a system with an AMD XP Athlon 2800+processor.

2. How would I set up a dual-boot with XP and Linux. Thanks for your help, Bert.

your system is more than adequate for linux, its designed to even run on very low end pc's. which one you choose is a matter of preference. personally I like fedora core 4 because it has a good balance between good looks and functionality. lots of people like ubuntu though. to get a general feel for what you want, it's good to first download a live-cd that boots on top of your windows installation but doesn't change any files.

here's a good distro based on a live-cd: http://www.knoppix.org/

you dual boot by making a partition on your drive for linux to install itself in. get a relatively new distribution and you'll be able to resize your xp install to give room for linux. linux installs a boot loader that runs at startup to let you pick which operating system to boot. most installations are graphical these days and it's quite easy to figure out. I'd link you to a tutorial but I don't know what distro you're planning to use and some articles can get very technical when they have no need to be.

This may help you to choose distro..

Thanks Force and Antartic Boy, I downloaded Linux Knoppix v.3.7. and burned a CD so that I could run it off the CD without installing it. I can't figure out how to make it run because XP doesn't know what to do with an ISO file. Are there some other files I need to make it work. I couldn't find any on the mirror site. Thanks again, Bert.

you need to burn it as an iso or your computer will not boot from it.

nero will do it, also this nice little freeware program

http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

Thanks for the info. I have burned CDs with both Nero and cdburnerxp but I still can't figure out to run them. Bert.

to burn with Nero, start the Nero express option, it will give you the choice to burn an iso on that.

click on start>programs>ahead>Neroexpress

Choose ISO then do as you usually do when you burn a disk, choiose the file, drag it over, burn it. Then reboot your computer with the cd in the drive, you will need to make sure you BIOS has cd-rom as 1st boot option. otherwise it will boot from the harddrive.

then enjoy linux

Just use magiciso to burn iso image to cd. It also is a good ISO creator. It works fine for me.

http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-overview.htm

G'day Bert,

It has been said before, but incase you haven't done it before ... You need to enter the BIOS settings, sometimes Del, F1, F2 or others during the start up sequence. Usually it will let you know which key to hit at the top or bottom of the first screen when you boot up. You need to select the CD/DVD-ROM as the first boot option so that the computer boots from there before the HDD.

yorry

This post has been edited by yorry76: Nov 15 2005, 08:57 PM

You'll want to create 4 partitions to run a good dual boot:

1. 20 GB NTFS for Windows XP.
2. 35 GB FAT32 for all music, pictures documents (this way they can be accessed by both OSes and if one OS dies they're still salvageable and fairly safe from viruses)
3.20 GB Ext3 for Linux
4. 1GB Linux Swap (this acts as extra RAM)