Advice About Dual Booting Linux (Ubuntu) and XP.

[Andrew Michaels]

Hi. I've been using XP for years, but I've been playing games less and less and now recognize the superiority of Linux, so it makes sense for me to switch to it for my main OS. I'd like to give Ubuntu a try as my main OS, with Windows XP in a separate partition for occasional gaming use.

I'd like to get suggestions on the best way to go about this. Do I put Windows in a partition only large enough to hold itself, or should I make it big enough for games too? Can Windows read files off the Linux Partition and vice versa?

Any general suggestions?

Thanks.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Andrew Michaels

I'd like to get suggestions on the best way to go about this. Do I put Windows in a partition only large enough to hold itself, or should I make it big enough for games too? Can Windows read files off the Linux Partition and vice versa?

I'm dual booting XP and Ubuntu, so I can tell you what my experience is. You'll want to have a partition for Windows that's large enough for any software and data you want Windows to be able to use. It can't read any Linux filesystems to my knowledge (and there are many of them). Linux can read/write the Microsoft FAT and FAT32 filesystems, but those are limited in terms of how many gigabytes a partition can be (2 GB for FAT and 4 GB for FAT32) so most people use NTFS now (which goes up to 256 TB).

Linux can read NTFS and has some write support, but I think the write support is limited to overwriting existing files. And last I checked, it was recommended not to use the NTFS write support on Linux because of reliability concerns. So in summary, Windows can't read Linux, Linux can read Windows but I'm not sure about write support. I have my NTFS partitions mounted as read only.

[Andrew Michaels]

Another Question. With Windows, I always had to install all of my mobo/printer/video card/sound card, etc drivers, one by one. Does Ubuntu just detect my hardware and download all drivers? I've been running it on an old laptop and it just seems to support my mobo without drivers....

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Andrew Michaels

Another Question. With Windows, I always had to install all of my mobo/printer/video card/sound card, etc drivers, one by one. Does Ubuntu just detect my hardware and download all drivers? I've been running it on an old laptop and it just seems to support my mobo without drivers....

Ubuntu tends to have better support for hardware out of the box because it's updated more often, so its driver database (of hardware that works with Linux) is more up to date. For me everything I use (including a network printer) works without any extra drivers. But it really depends on your specific hardware which may or may not work with Linux. The good news is that Dell has launched three systems preinstalled with Ubuntu a few days ago, with more to come. They said they'll be working with their hardware suppliers on improving driver support for Linux. So driver support on Linux will improve over time, although it's already pretty good.

[Waker]

Well this may sound a bit strange but works really well and it is:
Have four seperate partitions,
1: Ubuntu system files (known as "/" )
2: Ubuntu home directory (named "/home")
3: Windows system files and programs (C
4: Share NTFS partition

as the latest versions of Ubuntu support NTFS very easily its the best to go for as windows can interface with ext3 (which is the Linux standard) it really likes to fragment things (Linux doesn't fragment period)
The reason for having /home separate is that stores all your program option data when, like most people moving to linux, you break the system beyond repair you can just reformat the "/" part and all your settings, documents, etc.. in "/home" are safe.

Ubuntu should pick everything up fine. You'll need to configure your printer but that will be about it. Just to warn you but in the newest version scanners will not work due to some mistake that still hasn't been fixed.

Good luck! you might want

[child]

Hi

I am dual booting Debian and Xp on my laptop. Waker's partition advice is great.

I have 20 GB for xp and i use it just for gaming. It seems enough. But i usually uninstall games when i am done. Just leave configuration files and saved files undeleted if you want to play them again in the future.

Linux is great

[Andrew Michaels]

Originally Posted by Waker

Well this may sound a bit strange but works really well and it is:
Have four seperate partitions,
1: Ubuntu system files (known as "/" )
2: Ubuntu home directory (named "/home")
3: Windows system files and programs (C
4: Share NTFS partition

as the latest versions of Ubuntu support NTFS very easily its the best to go for as windows can interface with ext3 (which is the Linux standard) it really likes to fragment things (Linux doesn't fragment period)
The reason for having /home separate is that stores all your program option data when, like most people moving to linux, you break the system beyond repair you can just reformat the "/" part and all your settings, documents, etc.. in "/home" are safe.

Ubuntu should pick everything up fine. You'll need to configure your printer but that will be about it. Just to warn you but in the newest version scanners will not work due to some mistake that still hasn't been fixed.

Good luck! you might want

Ok. Does it matter what order I install things in? Can I do Linux First, or do I have to do Windows?

[Phil Newton]

I'm pretty sure you can do it either way. I've done it on two computers, and in both cases I had XP setup first. After that I'd defragment the drive (using PerfectDisk) and partition it into 4 sections : 1 NTFS for XP/Program Files, 1 ext3 for Ubuntu, a linux share partition (about 1gig) and then partition all the rest as FAT32. The partition limits are a little higher than 4GB, and I prefer to use FAT32 as both Windows and Linux can read and write quite happily. It's not ideal, but it works.

I could never get Ubuntu to work on my laptop, and the only distro that worked was MEPIS. I'm pretty sure it was a display driver problem. The only other driver problems I had with Ubuntu (and Linux in general) is with graphics cards. It took a lot of time and a lot of digging, but it can be solved.