linux

comp builder

comp builder

comp builder

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I went a friends last night and saw he had windows and linux installed together, he had the option which one to load on start-up. How do i do this? can i save both operating systems on one hard drive?
also i have my system overclocked, this may sound stupid but, would the overclock still work when i'm using linux?
also what is the benifit of linux, from what i can gather it loads and runs faster, dosn't it? is there any other benifits?
thanks
 
comp builder said:
I went a friends last night and saw he had windows and linux installed together, he had the option which one to load on start-up. How do i do this? can i save both operating systems on one hard drive?
Click to expand...

Its called duel-booting, you create multiple partitions (usually) with your different OS's on and then configure your bootloader to load the desired one. Easiest way to do it is to resize your windows partition, allocate space for linux then install there and configure your bootloader (grub/lilo) which OS to use.

comp builder said:
also i have my system overclocked, this may sound stupid but, would the overclock still work when i'm using linux?
Click to expand...

Yes normally, unless your overclock causes massive instability.

comp builder said:
also what is the benifit of linux, from what i can gather it loads and runs faster, dosn't it? is there any other benifits?
thanks
Click to expand...

Hard to say, depends on your metric for speed, all OS's suck. They all have their own advantages and benefits. :p
 
which is the best to download?
i thought maybe slackware but none of their mirros are working, so now i'm stuck. Anyone know which is best and can provide a link
thanks
 
No, there is a server version available but its main strong point is the desktop.
 
i wouldnt do a duel boot if i where you, the grub is which had a bad effect on my machine (what ubuntu uses for duel boot) :( google Wubi (sorry if its been mentioned) very useful too and to unninstall linux its a simble add remove job :D
it basicly downloads and installs ubuntu for you sets it up as a network kind of thing but if u want to unninstall you dont need to reinstall windows etc
 
You don't need to reinstall Windows if you partition properly :)

Although if you're not confident, it may be easier if you get an extra hard drive in there. Doesn't have to be too big.
 
Go for the dual booting... but back-up anything that you couldn't live without just in case.

Choose Ubuntu as your first distro of choice. Plenty of friendly support on t'interweb for any problem you're likely to encounter.

As already said, manually resize your Windows partition (after having defragged it first) before you start the Linux installation - 10GB should easily be enough. Then select the manual partitioning option during the installation, and just configure it manually... it's not hard, just tell it to create one partition for swap of, say, 1GB and the rest to use as the root partition. Choose ext3 for the file system type for the root partition. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Oh, and as this is your first play with Linux I'd recommend having a look at this page too... http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Welcome to the Bright Side.... have fun :)
 
A second HDD is the safest way to go. You can even setup the GRUB boot-loader on the second HDD so nothing touches your Windows HDD. You just need to make sure your BIOS has been set to boot from the Linux HDD.

Overclocking settings are done in the Motherboard's CMOS. Which is entirely independant of any OS you might be running. So your clocks will remain intact. You will need to make sure they are rock solid however, as Linux is more sensitive to errors than Windows.

I can't recommend Ubuntu enough. I have been using it as my main OS for months now and it is brilliant. It is true some things are a pain in the arse, but what OS is perfect?
 
gumbald said:
You don't need to reinstall Windows if you partition properly :)

Although if you're not confident, it may be easier if you get an extra hard drive in there. Doesn't have to be too big.
Click to expand...


ahuh but im guessing he hasnt done this before, thats why i recommended wubi, if you dont want it anymore its just normal boot into windows add remove unninstall wubi there we have it no linux installed...ive done it many times :D u can choose the ammount of partition u want max is like 30GB
 
Sharki said:
ahuh but im guessing he hasnt done this before, thats why i recommended wubi, if you dont want it anymore its just normal boot into windows add remove unninstall wubi there we have it no linux installed...ive done it many times :D u can choose the ammount of partition u want max is like 30GB
Click to expand...

But if he does decide to keep it, he's then got to reinstall and do it all again properly.

Your method is very pessimistic :p
 
fumbles said:
Which is just minimal install of Ubuntu. Debian is for servers.
Click to expand...

And where do you think a lot of the packages which Ubuntu/Debian end up? Yeah that's right they share their packages between distros! Canonical offer payed support to business customers, there is one massive advantage of Ubuntu or Red Hat on a server which Debian just does not have.

How exactly is debian different from ubuntu server anyway? Very little difference imo, if anything the packages are more up to date in ubuntu lts, than debian stable...

I would be using OpenBSD, Solaris or HPUX on my servers anyway...
 
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I have Debian on my desktop... it's not just a server distro it's not like windows where you can draw the lines so easily. After installing a few packages you can change a linux distros purpose quite dramatically. if you look at os's as tools windows would be a screw-driver and linux would be a swiss-army knife.
 
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