Linux dual boot media pc question's

[Colbaker]

Hi all,

I am a noob at all things linux so please bare with me, What i want to do is set up linux to dual boot my current windows 7 installation but have no idea where to even start. My "first" questions are...

1.What Distro shall i use (its going to be mainly for media playback in HD)
2.How do i dual boot it with windows 7 but not harm my windows install?
3.What software is a must for a Media pc running Linux?

Hope you guys can help.

Many thanks.

 

[Smit]

Possibly try XBMC Live if it's just going to be used as a Media Player/Center

 

[masterluke]

1.What Distro shall i use (its going to be mainly for media playback in HD)

I would use Ubuntu. Its easy for new users.

2.How do i dual boot it with windows 7 but not harm my windows install?

Safest way is to use a second hard disk and physically unplug the windows disk while youre installing ubuntu. You can plug it in again afterwards and use the bios to switch between startup disks. There are other ways but this is pretty foolproof and safe.

3.What software is a must for a Media pc running Linux?

XBMC for a nice full screen interface or SMplayer for a simple media player.

What video card are you using?
What sound connections are you using?

 

[brendan]

1.What Distro shall i use (its going to be mainly for media playback in HD)

I would use Ubuntu. Its easy for new users.

+1

2.How do i dual boot it with windows 7 but not harm my windows install?

Safest way is to use a second hard disk and physically unplug the windows disk while youre installing ubuntu. You can plug it in again afterwards and use the bios to switch between startup disks. There are other ways but this is pretty foolproof and safe.

Don't do that because thats ugly. Leave it in, ubuntu will offer to resize your windows partition (NTFS is supported) and will write a grub entry nicely so you can select windows or ubuntu. The ubuntu installer is very careful at not wiping your windows partitions. (actually it's so careful it will always propose to wipe linux partitions instead!)

3.What software is a must for a Media pc running Linux?

XBMC for a nice full screen interface or SMplayer for a simple media player.

What video card are you using?
What sound connections are you using?

+1 for XBMC.

vlc works nicely too, i'm not a huge fan of smplayer, but it's a nice enough UI for mplayer.

For video acceleration nvidia + vdpau works best on linux. HDMI for sound is supported and ATI cards have DXVA accel. on newest drivers (doesnt work as well) although HDMI sound works on all but the 6xxx ati series even on the opensource drivers.

 

[masterluke]

+1
Don't do that because thats ugly. Leave it in, ubuntu will offer to resize your windows partition (NTFS is supported) and will write a grub entry nicely so you can select windows or ubuntu. The ubuntu installer is very careful at not wiping your windows partitions. (actually it's so careful it will always propose to wipe linux partitions instead!)

You are right it IS ugly. But i have managed to render a windows partition unbootable while dual booting before so I like to take an uglier cautious approach.

 

[Essexraptor]

You are right it IS ugly. But i have managed to render a windows partition unbootable while dual booting before so I like to take an uglier cautious approach.

Although the MBR is quite a simple operation to repair with Win7

In my early days (only a couple of months ago!!!) when dual booting Ubuntu on my laptop I did all sorts of thuggery, deleting the Linux partition and worse and I was still able to repair the MBR and reboot to my original Win7 OS. As long as you backup all your valuable data/drivers etc it's no great shakes really

 

[m4rkw7]

1.What Distro shall i use (its going to be mainly for media playback in HD)

Ubuntu.

2.How do i dual boot it with windows 7 but not harm my windows install?

Ubuntu installer will handle this, It'll use the GRUB boot loader. Just don't install over Windows! Be sure to partition and also create a swap partition for Linux.

3.What software is a must for a Media pc running Linux?

VLC