Setting up dualboot on my computer?

[Zyreal]

Okay, I've run Windows ever since I got my first computer. I'd consider myself pretty tech savvy, and pretty good with windows, I've modified my windows shell to improve the look and such, but I've never even touched any of the *nix OSs. I actually saw the YouTube video as a link on Fark and I figured I'd check it all out.

And when I say I've never touched any of the *nix OSs, I mean it. I knew that there were two other OSs named Unix and Linux, but knew nothing other than that. Wikipedia helped. Still a bit lost though.

So of course I have tons of questions still, regarding drivers and such, but other wise I'm pretty psyched about exploring a totally different side of computing.

Like I said before, I know my way around computers, hardware and software(Windows based at least). I built my system from scratch...etc. But I don't know any programming languages or such. Any software modding I do is either hunting down an editor or text editing ini's.

So, I've got a spare drive sitting around, how would I go about creating a dual boot system and then dropping this on there?

And just it case it's helpful (I mentioned I'm clueless on non-windows drivers)

System Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
ASUS A8N-E 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard
1.5GB RAM DDR 400 PC3200
GeForce 7600GS 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express Video Card
Dual Monitors
2 Seagate SATA Drives, 2 Seagate IDE drives (One of which I'll be using purely for this, it's completely empty)
Annnnnnd my primary boot is Windows XP SP2

Thanks in advance.

- Z

[d_garbage]

Hi Zyreal,

Wanted to welcome you to the wonderful world of Linux. :)

My advice for trying Linux is, "stick with it". I found the learning curve was near vertical at first. It's frustrating when you don't yet know how to do basic stuff that you wouldn't think twice about in windows. Soon you'll find you can do everything you could before and much more. Also there are fun little surprises like: "What do you mean, 'no need to defragment'? Impossible!" and "Huh? I DON'T have to reboot for everything?".

There are lots of helpful people here who will be only too happy to help you get Compiz Fusion installed on whatever distro of Linux you choose (not me, as I don't really know much :rolleyes: )
Also there's tonnes of stuff on the net about all this and if you use IRC there are some handy linux channels on freenode.net, including #compiz-fusion.

Best of luck,
David

PS Here (http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=5752) is a post I did once for someone asking about which distro to choose.

[delfick]

hello :D

welcome :)

I suggest starting with ubuntu, just go over to ubuntu.com, download the gutsy gibbon iso image and follow this guide (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BurningIsoHowto) to burn it to a cd

put the cd in the computer and reboot.

It will then boot from that cd and once it's up and running you can double click the "install" icon on the desktop and follow the dialog to install linux.

and if you ever need help with linux in general, ubuntuforums.org is a great place to ask for help :D

good luck

(btw, I've moved this threads to linux talk)

oh yeah, and as for compiz/compiz-fusion, that's installed by default on ubuntu gutsy, so all you need to do to have that up and running is activate it... (a search on these forums should give you quite a few threads on how to do that :D)

[Zyreal]

Thanks guys, getting Ubuntu right now. Once I figure out the basics I'll probably be back with Compiz questions =)

Again, I appreciate the help.

- Z

[delfick]

no probs :)

have fun :D

[Forlong]

2 Seagate SATA Drives, 2 Seagate IDE drives (One of which I'll be using purely for this, it's completely empty)
That's great. Make sure you set up a separate partition for /home in the installation process.

Give Ubuntu (/ in the partitioning process) 10 GBs and the rest to /home
I know this sounds confusing in the beginning but this will save you a lot of hassle.

[flashbug]

Zyreal, welcome! Yer gonna have fun with Linux, to say the least- it's a blast! I have been playing with Linux for about 14 years, and cannot tell you how many distros I have installed...all have their points. As I'm sure you have found out, dual-boot is a breeze.
Nothing against Ubuntu, (as it is a mighty fine distro) but I felt uncomfortable using the Gnome WM. There is a variant called Kubuntu for more windows-like functionality, or you can install the KDE packages in the repository in Ubuntu. Just couldn't get used to using sudo.............
My current distro is PCLinuxOS , which provided me with a Control Centre that I can work with. With Compiz-fusion, you can enjoy stuff that Vi$ta is not capable of without new hardware. Have Fun!!

[delfick]

as for gnome and kde (welcome to the neverending arguement about which is better :D) they are called desktop environments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment) and many exist (gnome, kde, xfce, enlightenment, and some others)

you can have many installed all at once and can choose them at you login screen (by choosing the session option).....

:D

[Klaatu]

It might be worthwhile to start with a Live CD version of a distro. You can run it from the CD drive and never touch a hard drive. You can try several different distros that way, before you commit. You can also try different desktops.

My preference is for opensuse. The live CD works well and a dual boot install is a snap. You can even install from the live CD. When opensuse installs, it sees you have windows and other drives without windows installed. It will suggest one of those drives for the install. If you pick the empty one, suse will do all the work. It will install to the empty drive and give you a boot menu to select which operating system you wish to start each time you boot.

As noted above, you don't have to reboot very often. I have a dual boot system with XP and I almost never boot to it. Each time I do, I remember why I like linux so much. I started with Windows 3.1 and used every version since. But, I use it so seldom now, I barely remember how :D

[some-guy]

Ubuntu's not bad, but I say suse's better (there's xcb support built-in too :D)

[Zyreal]

I know it's a bit simplistic, but I had to start somewhere. What I'm roughly trying to accomplish is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ImW0-MgR8I

Thats the video that got me curious about all this, I really liked the look of the Desktop Environment(I hope I'm using the right term) And colors and such.

So, would that be Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gnome, KDE or openSuSE? Or am I totally missing the point?

Annnd I was wondering, I have an Athlon 64 processer (see first post), should I get the 64-bit or 32-bit version? I assumed 64-bit, but after reading a bit more around the forums and such it seems like 32bit is more stable, even on a 64bit system. (Same reason I'm still using 32bit XP)

[Deciare]

It looks to me like the computer featured in the video is using KDE with several Konqueror file management windows, Amarok playlist and player windows, Konsole, and a digiKam window. Later on, a couple of MPlayer windows are introduced. The dock at the bottom shown near the end of the video looks like either KSmoothDock or kxDocker. Nothing in the video suggests that any particular Linux distribution is being used.

The effects demonstrated in that video should be possible to achieve using any distribution with any desktop environment since Compiz Fusion is responsible for most of them.

Annnd I was wondering, I have an Athlon 64 processer (see first post), should I get the 64-bit or 32-bit version? I assumed 64-bit, but after reading a bit more around the forums and such it seems like 32bit is more stable, even on a 64bit system. (Same reason I'm still using 32bit XP)
Some distributions have implemented 64-bit support very poorly in the past, but they've hopefully learned from those experiences and improved since then. I use Arch Linux for the x86_64 architecture, personally, and it's as stable as the 32-bit version ever was.

Presuming that overall stability is not an issue, the next major issue you're likely to come across is application compatibility. Most proprietary software, including the Flash plugin, Adobe Reader, and VMware don't come in 64-bit variants. Some free software, such as Wine, is also not 64-bit compatible. Different distributions have different ways of working around the compatibility issue, so it's hard to say in advance how much trouble you're likely to have with it.

For the simplicity of having everything "just work", it would probably be easier for you to go with a 32-bit distribution for now, then upgrade to 64-bit when you're more experienced and confident.