Dual boot: WinXPpro +Mandrake 10.0

[QuickSilver]

Sup guys. I want to try out Mandrake 10.0, but I would like to keep my WinXPpro installation. How would I go about making a dual boot system? Also, I would like both OS systems to have full acess to all the HDDs and programs, so that I can compare the two. Thanks for any imput!

[kilgoretrout]

Wait a couple weeks and mdk10-official edition should be out. What's on the mirrors now is mdk10-coummunity edition which is like a shake down cruise for mdk10-oe. There's a ton of bugfixing going on in CE so unless your familiar with linux, waiting would be advisable. One bug in particular in CE you should be aware of is with the partitioning utility used by the installer that could screw up your partition table in the mbr making it impossible to boot into winxp. That bug has been corrected in the updates but not in the CE isos you would download.
Last week the development tree for CE was frozen and the isos were sent by mandrake to the their cd manufacturer for pressing so the isos for mdk10-oe should be out shortly and be much more stable than CE.

Also, I would like both OS systems to have full acess to all the HDDs and programs, so that I can compare the two.

Windows cannot access linux partitions by design. MS has no interest in promoting interoperability with linux. Linux can read and write to FAT32 partitions but has read only access to NTFS. Also, you can't run windows programs on linux w/o a some special software to handle the windows APIs. A program called "wine" is most commonly used in linux for this purpose but it's still considered alpha software and does not run many windows programs. There are commercial emulators available for linux which allow you to run many windows programs but they all cost money( VMWare, win4lin, codeweavers, winex). For starters, I think you would be better off using the free linux programs that come with the install(there's a ton of them) than trying to get windows programs to run on linux.

Probably the best way to get your feet wet with linux is to use knoppix. It's a linux distro that runs entirely off a bootable cd and writes nothing to your hard drive. It runs slow since it's loading everything off a cd but it will give you some idea of what the linux desktop is about and give you something to do until mdk10-oe comes out.

[natebo]

Don't forget about Fedora Core, I've found that Gnome is easier to use than KDE, Mandrake has never been easy to use, even when implementing Gnome. The advice is correct, though. Just wait, a new killer kernel is coming out that will be fun. Also, if your new to linux, piece together another system just for for linux. Dual Boot is boring, when you want to try something you can't, because you have to power sown and reboot. It's lame, if your anything like me, and want a new hobby you'll love linux, but not dual boot.

[QuickSilver]

Thanks for all the info!

[bigandy]

Originally posted by natebo ...I've found that Gnome is easier to use than KDE, Mandrake has never been easy to use, even when implementing Gnome....

Hmmm. I'm about as newbie as you can get when it comes to Linux, but I've used (and just reinstalled on an older PC) Mandrake 9.2 and used KDE rather than Gnome, and had no problems at all. And its pretty easy to use, in my opinion anyway.

[natebo]

It's wierd, Mandrake runs better with KDE than Gnome. They short change you, if you want to run Gnome. Mandrake for me wouldn't recover after the screen saver, and like I said, had dependency issues while using gnome. With red hat, whatever desktop you wanted would work just fine, maybe it's a support thing...

[bigandy]

Interesting. Thanks for the info Nate.