«

Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an xp
home machine to dual boot?
Joy

Joy wrote:
> Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an xp
> home machine to dual boot?
> Joy

http://debian.co.nz/downloadfinder?distro=Fedora

On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 22:00:44 +1300, Joy wrote:

> Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an xp
> home machine to dual boot?

Things you need to bear in mind...

1/ you're talking about downloading potentially 5 full CDs worth of
software. You'd be better off buying a magazine with that distro on a DVD.

2/ MS Windows assumes that it is the only OS installed onto a HDD - and it
will impose that assumption if you install WinXP "home" after you
installed ANY other operating system in a dual boot arrangement. Thus
install MS Windows first, and then any other OSes afterwards. This means
all your configuration of dual booting needs to be done in the non-MS
environment.

3/ All linux distros properly should have as a minumum 3 partitions
dedicated to the linux system - the "root" ("/") directory, the "Home"
("/home") directories shoud be on their own partitions, as also should the
"Swap" space. Setting it up like that means you can easily update the
system without needing to worry too much about your personal
data/documents.

4/ You will need to have spare space on the HDD that is not being used by
MS Windows - space that you can then use to create partitions for use by
Linux.

5/ I reccommend using the KDE desktop if you have a CPU with sufficient
grunt - because it's much more configurable, but I also reccommed that you
have both KDE *and* Gnome installed, as many good programmes (such as
Evolution & Pan, need libraries that are a part of the Gnome desktop.

6/ There are two main places in the GUI for locating settings - one has
the settings relating to the GUI, and the other has everything else.

7/ Learn how to use the VI text editor - it's the best of the
terminal/Konsole based textfile editors - you may end up needing it when
you don't have a GUI to use.


Ma Hogany

--
"The average user doesn't know what he wants. The average user wants
fries with that, if prompted."

T'was the Wed, 4 Oct 2006 22:00:44 +1300 when I remembered "Joy"
<> saying something like this:

>Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an xp
>home machine to dual boot?

You can download it (mind the bandwidth charges), or get it on DVD
from DSE. When dual booting, it's best to have a bit of hard drive
space not allocated to anything. All your HD space taken up? Resize
those partitions with Partition Magic or something. Then get Fedora to
create all the partitions it needs from the free space. *take note*
that it doesn't wipe over your Windows partition, be careful and
backup all your important data before you play.
--
Cheers,

Waylon Kenning.

Waylon Kenning wrote:

> T'was the Wed, 4 Oct 2006 22:00:44 +1300 when I remembered "Joy"
> <> saying something like this:
>
>>Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an
>>xp home machine to dual boot?
>
> You can download it (mind the bandwidth charges), or get it on DVD
> from DSE. When dual booting, it's best to have a bit of hard drive
> space not allocated to anything. All your HD space taken up? Resize
> those partitions with Partition Magic or something. Then get Fedora to
> create all the partitions it needs from the free space. *take note*
> that it doesn't wipe over your Windows partition, be careful and
> backup all your important data before you play.


Two possible problems with that scenario.
If the Windows partition is marked as Hidden FAT32 0x1B 0x1C or NTFS hidden
0x17 Then the windows partition may become unbootable after the install
(Its easy to fix, just fire up cfdisk and change the Type for the windows
partition to 0x0B 0x0C or (NTFS) 0x07 but its more than your average
beginner can grok)
Another problem with Partition magic, and more likely, is the map to
ntoskrnl will change, and its a prick to find it with the boot.ini for the
experienced, let alone a beginner

In light of these issues, I suggest Joy finds the local Linux User Group, go
to a meeting with her computer and someone will help her out
</muddying the water>
--
Zapp Brannigan: The key to victory is dicipline, and that means a well made
bed. You will practice until you can make your bed in your sleep.
Fry: You mean while I'm sleeping in it?
Zapp Brannigan: You won't have time for sleeping soldier, not with all the
bed making you'll be doing.

blog: http://shanes.dyndns.org

"Shane" <> wrote in message
news:eg0thn$j5$...
> Waylon Kenning wrote:
>
>> T'was the Wed, 4 Oct 2006 22:00:44 +1300 when I remembered "Joy"
>> <> saying something like this:
>>
>>>Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an
>>>xp home machine to dual boot?

> Two possible problems with that scenario.
> If the Windows partition is marked as Hidden FAT32 0x1B 0x1C or NTFS
> hidden
> 0x17 Then the windows partition may become unbootable after the install
> (Its easy to fix, just fire up cfdisk and change the Type for the windows
> partition to 0x0B 0x0C or (NTFS) 0x07 but its more than your average
> beginner can grok)
> Another problem with Partition magic, and more likely, is the map to
> ntoskrnl will change, and its a prick to find it with the boot.ini for the
> experienced, let alone a beginner
>
> In light of these issues, I suggest Joy finds the local Linux User Group,
> go
> to a meeting with her computer and someone will help her out
> </muddying the water>
> --
> Zapp Brannigan: The key to victory is dicipline, and that means a well
> made
> bed. You will practice until you can make your bed in your sleep.
> Fry: You mean while I'm sleeping in it?
> Zapp Brannigan: You won't have time for sleeping soldier, not with all the
> bed making you'll be doing.

I have not got a copy of partition magic. The pc in question is a new one,
home built and I formated both partitions on the 280g hard disk to ntfs,
the one containing windows is 30g. The second partition has 160g still free.
I use it mainly for video editing which requires lots of space. The dvd
fedora image downloaded overnight, I notice that it's a winRAR archive, so I
guess it needs to be unpacked before writing to dvd. So you think installing
it is beyond this old lady? It quite possibly is. What a shame, the last
time I tried to install a type of linux, years ago, it was a disaster. Since
then I've been practising installing various windows os's on various
machines and I've got more confidence. But now, to be on the safe side, I'll
have to find someone to help me.
Joy

"MaHogany" <> wrote in message
news...
> On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 22:00:44 +1300, Joy wrote:
>
>> Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an
>> xp
>> home machine to dual boot?
>
> Things you need to bear in mind...
>
> 1/ you're talking about downloading potentially 5 full CDs worth of
> software. You'd be better off buying a magazine with that distro on a DVD.
>
> 2/ MS Windows assumes that it is the only OS installed onto a HDD - and it
> will impose that assumption if you install WinXP "home" after you
> installed ANY other operating system in a dual boot arrangement. Thus
> install MS Windows first, and then any other OSes afterwards. This means
> all your configuration of dual booting needs to be done in the non-MS
> environment.
>
> 3/ All linux distros properly should have as a minumum 3 partitions
> dedicated to the linux system - the "root" ("/") directory, the "Home"
> ("/home") directories shoud be on their own partitions, as also should the
> "Swap" space. Setting it up like that means you can easily update the
> system without needing to worry too much about your personal
> data/documents.
>
> 4/ You will need to have spare space on the HDD that is not being used by
> MS Windows - space that you can then use to create partitions for use by
> Linux.
>
> 5/ I reccommend using the KDE desktop if you have a CPU with sufficient
> grunt - because it's much more configurable, but I also reccommed that you
> have both KDE *and* Gnome installed, as many good programmes (such as
> Evolution & Pan, need libraries that are a part of the Gnome desktop.
>
> 6/ There are two main places in the GUI for locating settings - one has
> the settings relating to the GUI, and the other has everything else.
>
> 7/ Learn how to use the VI text editor - it's the best of the
> terminal/Konsole based textfile editors - you may end up needing it when
> you don't have a GUI to use.

Thanks for your advice.
Joy

> Where is the best place to download it from? How is best installed on an xp
> home machine to dual boot?
> Joy
>
>

ftp://ftp.wicks.co.nz as per the Fedora Mirror list.

Joy wrote:

> I have not got a copy of partition magic. The pc in question is a new one,
> home built and I formated both partitions on the 280g hard disk to ntfs,
> the one containing windows is 30g. The second partition has 160g still free.
> I use it mainly for video editing which requires lots of space. The dvd
> fedora image downloaded overnight, I notice that it's a winRAR archive, so I
> guess it needs to be unpacked before writing to dvd. So you think installing
> it is beyond this old lady? It quite possibly is. What a shame, the last
> time I tried to install a type of linux, years ago, it was a disaster. Since
> then I've been practising installing various windows os's on various
> machines and I've got more confidence. But now, to be on the safe side, I'll
> have to find someone to help me.

Any particular reason for choosing Fedora as opposed to Ubuntu (or
something else a bit more newbie friendly)?


--
EMB

T'was the Thu, 5 Oct 2006 08:02:01 +1300 when I remembered "Joy"
<> saying something like this:

>I have not got a copy of partition magic. The pc in question is a new one,
>home built and I formated both partitions on the 280g hard disk to ntfs,
>the one containing windows is 30g. The second partition has 160g still free.
>I use it mainly for video editing which requires lots of space. The dvd
>fedora image downloaded overnight, I notice that it's a winRAR archive, so I
>guess it needs to be unpacked before writing to dvd. So you think installing
>it is beyond this old lady? It quite possibly is. What a shame, the last
>time I tried to install a type of linux, years ago, it was a disaster. Since
>then I've been practising installing various windows os's on various
>machines and I've got more confidence. But now, to be on the safe side, I'll
>have to find someone to help me.

I don't think it's super hard, I guess the most important tip as
always is back up your data. If all your data is backed up onto those
DVDs or another hard drive, then have a ball and just experiment. I
mean, if your data's safe, what do you have to lose?

And if all this makes you a little nervous, a good way of playing
around in Linux is in a virtual machine! Try either Virtual PC 2004 or
VMWare Workstation (I believe there's trials for both available). It's
an application that creates a virtual PC, and allows you to play with
any OS to your hearts content without having to get down and dirty
with partitions and things like that before you're ready. I just
downloaded Kubuntu, and I'm gonna put it into a virtual PC, since I
really can't be bothered resizing partitions.
--
Cheers,

Waylon Kenning.