Help with Setting Up Linux Distro Right

[Werner]

I bought another Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250 GB SATA II hard disk yesterday and now I'm planning to set up a not-so-ordinary dual boot setting with Windows XP on the new HD and Ubuntustudio on the old one. Now, I need help getting this to work right so if you could help me out in layman terms (I don't know much about Linux), I'd be more than glad.

So, here's the plan:
- Soon I'll detach my old HD and put in the new one, install Windows XP and all programs I need etc.
- Put the old HD in and copy all of my important files to the new HD
- detach the new HD, put the old one back and insert Ubuntustudio DVD, re-format the whole disk and install Ubuntustudio on it
- create one FAT32 partition on the old HD so that I can save files created in Linux there and copy them to my Windows HD

Why am I doing this? Frankly, the only reason is that my 3D modeling app of choice Blender doesn't allow as high polycounts on Windows as it does in Linux. So now I just want to keep the operating systems on separate hard disks and have them both accessible in the boot menu. This way I can create hi-polygon models on Linux, save them on the FAT32 drive and copy them to my Windows HD.

This tutorial at least tells it's possible:
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2622/how-to_dual-boot_ubuntu

So, will my current plan work? Do I have to have the Windows HD attached when I install Ubuntustudio? All help appreciated since I was planning to get this thing going to day.

Edit: Also, do Linux distros have problems with SATA II?

 

[Xendance]

Hmm... if I recall correctly, it is possible to make Windows read and write in ext3 format, that way you wouldn't need the fat32 partition.
Don't know how though, and I never managed to make my old laptop to dual boot. It just gave me a bluescreen when trying to boot into windows.

 

[Hyperion2010]

Hmm... if I recall correctly, it is possible to make Windows read and write in ext3 format, that way you wouldn't need the fat32 partition.
Don't know how though, and I never managed to make my old laptop to dual boot. It just gave me a bluescreen when trying to boot into windows.

I've never heard of being able to get windows to read ext3, however I wouldnt really want my windows install to be mounting my ext3 partitions since I always feel like it will mess something up.

Before doing anything with linux I recomend you choose a distro.
My two recomendations are gentoo (which I use) and ubuntu. If you like to work from terminals and can handle reading install docs then I would go for gentoo since with use flags (portage is a sorta auto updater for all the software in the distro) it is possible to compile programs so that they run more efficiently.
If you dont think you can handle gentoo (all updates do require you to use a terminal) then ubuntu is easy so long as you can burn the .iso to a cd. TGdaily just wrote an article on it, www.tgdaily.com so check on that if you think you want ubuntu.

Just a word about a practical procedure when installing linux. Make sure to unplug your windows drive so that nothing accidental happens.

 

[aktionman]

I've never heard of being able to get windows to read ext3

You can however get windows to read extfs2: The freeware at http://www.fs-driver.org "provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003 with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access)"

 

[Monkwarrior]

Keep it simple.
I suggest you use ubuntu-studio, tho you might want to look at some forums about hardware recognition with this distro.

I would also suggest to use gparted to partition your old HD.
It comes with a live-cd, just like ubuntu-studio.

Monk.

 

[Werner]

Thanks guys for the help! I ran into a really nasty page fault error when installing Windows and had to re-format and install everything again today so I won't be touching Ubuntu in a while.

 

[Fu. Svedberg]

Thanks guys for the help! I ran into a really nasty page fault error when installing Windows and had to re-format and install everything again today so I won't be touching Ubuntu in a while.

Never install anyother OS before installing windows. Windows will mess up stuff upon install

 

[Monkwarrior]

Yep either he messed up the install-order or got confused during partition stage and installed something on his win-partition. Either way it's not ubuntu's fault of course. Keeping away from ubuntu sure helps in his case

 

[Werner]

No, no, no, this had nothing to do with Linux: my nForce drivers ****ed up something and I got BSODed at every reboot. Didn't even get to install Linux.

Now my XP works great so I'm going to attach my old HD one day and try Wubi out (an installer that let's you install a Ubuntu distro from Windows).

 

[/linuX/gitano]

Hi,

@Werner: Whatever you choose to install, just make sure that the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the partition/ hdd you want to run your bootloader from is not getting overwritten by any installer. By default, xp installs its bootloader into the MBR of the primary master, so if theres already some unix bootloader located it gets overwritten and you cannot boot Linux anymore. Not a big deal, though, one could always easily rewrite the bootloader using a livecd etc.

Well, one setup i always recommend where you really cant mess up anything:

- Connect the hdd u want linux'es on as primary master and that u want windows on as primary slave (as for SATA disks accordingly Linux sata1, windows sata2 etc.)
- when installing xp. simply unplug the primary disk, so that xp wont touch its MBR during installation
- install linux on primary hdd and choose a bootloader (i'd recommend Grub, easy to edit and boots almost everything). Some distros already automagically detect the windows installation, if not its quite easy to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst accordingly. Note, that grub counts the disks/ partitions as following: (0,0) = primary disk, first partition; (0,1) second partition etc.

As for sharing ext3 with xp, that above mentioned driver works flawlessly with ext2/3 shares of any sizes, am using this one for years now. U can even execute/ install win32 binaries on ext3 with that . However xfs/ reiserfs wont work, afaik :/.
As for mounting xp shares on Linux, well best choice is obviously still crappy fat32... ntfs support is readonly afaik, havent installed a windows on ntfs for ages, though, maybe write support is better now.

Well, whatever u do, make sure u read at least a bit on Howtos/ tutrials/ manpages. Note that the partition/ drive namings are a bit different under linux... so if u dont wanna have any data losses make sure u understand which hdd's/ partition your are going to format.

Good Luck and hf with Linux!

greetz,
gitano

 

[tropsobor]

just out of curiosity, what distro do you use gitano and which one would you recommend for a beginner?

 

[/linuX/gitano]

Hi tropsobor,

Atm i'm using Archlinux (www.archlinux.org) which is a very fine clean, slick and transparent distro. Been using Gentoo for over a year now, like it very much as well... but at a point i got tired of these compiling orgies .
Arch feels pretty much the same, only that everything is distributed in binaries as well as sources and i havent felt any performance differences to Gentoo until now. Maybe not that stable and not that many packages, yet (its quite a young distro) but u can install almost everything via the arch user repositories (aur.archlinux.org).

For a recommendation.. hm, difficult to say: Try 'em out and choose what u like best . Debian/ Ubuntu is certainly a good start, so are (Open)Suse, Fedora & Co. Almost every distro out there that i know provides a live cd of their compilations, this is always a good start to have a look at something before u mess around with a hdd installation.

Well, i'd say: if u want a quick go and running Linux desktop have a start wit Ubuntu. Once u have messed up everything there (which can go pretty fast with debian based distros, imho ) try out rpm based distros. And if u wanna finally learn whats behind your system and if u are overwhelmed by that excellent Gentoo documentation, give it some days and try it out .
You will most probably run that for quite a long time... its damn stable. But at one time there will always be the point where u mess up that installation too and you are tired of setting all that stuff up again -> welcome to Arch .

Hrhr, nah, but pretty much sums up my experiences during the last years. After buying my first comp and running w98/ w2k for half a year, i also had a start with some livecds (Knoppix that was) and wanted to get that on hdd pretty fast... dunno it must have been love at first sight . But prepare to invest quite some time, quite a few things are totally different than under win/ os-x. If one might think after one week of trying out Linux "Wow, it doesn't support my hardware xyz, this OS stinks" no, Linux is definately not for him . Basically, everything works, only requires some input...well, u invest some time, but what u get back is a nice customized machine and last but not least some knowledge about your comp, which cannot hurt at all .

Hope that helps!

greetz,
gitano