Dual boot
Private_Snoball
Dover AFB, DE, USA
Hello there,
Right now I have Windows XP, and I have just placed FreeBSD.iso on a CD. Well 2 CD's actually, and I was curious if I can just install it like I did Win XP on a new partition, or do I need to do something to my MBL. I'm new to the UNIX seen but seeing as how I am going into programming I will be around here for awhile.
Thanks
Right now I have Windows XP, and I have just placed FreeBSD.iso on a CD. Well 2 CD's actually, and I was curious if I can just install it like I did Win XP on a new partition, or do I need to do something to my MBL. I'm new to the UNIX seen but seeing as how I am going into programming I will be around here for awhile.
Thanks
0
Comments
You can install it, but you just won't be able to get to it (unless you boot off the CD and mount it from there, etc, which is a pain)
1) get something to resize that win partition. bootit ng was a neat util. gave myself ~ 5 gigs which was plenty to goof around with.
2)install freebsd on that new space. it will install it's own bootloader with a neat little ascii freeBSD demon on it.
3) during the auto install, might as well go with the default recommended partition layout until you understand what/why all the partitions are there.
now last time i installed freeBSD the iso fit on one cd, so make sure your burn is good.
also, the very fisrt time i installed freeBSD i went ahead with one of the pre-rolled packages that had a windowing server, gnome and a few other things already bundled up instead of grabbing each individual little package individually.
freeBSD is pretty easy to install, just read the docs first. just be forewarned, as linux seems to be the Golden One these days, cutting edge hardware support in freeBSD is a tad lackluster, but i doubt you'll have any probs making stuff just work. dont be too hyped up about getting every single possible fps out of that vid card though
Thanks for that reply, it was very informative.
First I would like to ask how to get freeBSD to boot at start up. I set my BIOS to what it needs, I press the key during boot up to get it to boot from a cd and I have the CD for freeBSD in my 5 1/2" drive slot. Though this version of freeBSD took 2 discs, and about filled them too.
I got the packages from freebsd.com and they came in two .iso packages so I placed them on seperate cds.
Basically my whole problem right now is getting the CD to start up while my PC is POSTing so I can begin an install.
Also I will be using this to program not do too much if any real video processing so I'm not to worried about it. Plus my 2x 6600 gts are in the mail with my SLi Mobo, though I appreciate the concern.
Thanks again,
Alex
newbies to linux sometimes run afoul of a few probs with the MBR
set ups. easy and good way to go is seperate hard drive with MBR solely linux, if u want to 'dual boot' definitely put the the boot loader on fdo (yer floppie) once you mess with yer win MBR yer opening up a seperate bunch of problems. if u absolutely have to modify yer win MBR , use Ultimate boot disk to save yer original MBR to a floppy.
reccomend a wonderful linux distro that runs on yer CD player, called MEPIS
When installed on a hard drive, MEPIS is no faster or slower than any other version of Linux. In general, desktop Linux is as fast as MS-Windows XP running on the same machine.
When running from CD, MEPIS can be quite slow due a CDROM drive being very slow compared to a hard drive. Also the CD is compressed to make room for about 2GB of software, so when the software is run it has to be decompressed on-the-fly.
Buy and/or Download MEPIS Linux
http://www.mepis.org/book/view/1462
important hard to find mepis info
when you first open it up it asks fer a log in and password
' demo ' is both login and password for user level
' root ' is both login and password for Admin level
I use mepis for saving info and repairing Lin/win installs
and giving newbies an easy taste of Linux!
been messin with Suse 9.2 lately
on a 64 bit AMD system, very nice! linux
has come a long way in the last 5 yrs.
sounds like you need to set your bios to boot from cd. if it tries to boot from cd, but fails, chances are you had a bad burn. what did you use to burn the ISOs?
and those guys are right, if you install any other bootloader into your mbr, (which freeBSD will do) you'll hose your windows loader. you'll still be able to boot into windows, that's no problem, but if you ever uninstall freeBSD you'll have to fix the mbr to use the machine. i believe you can do this from the win install cd, OR you can do as sunshine said and leave the bootloader on a floppy and just always be sure to use the floppy when you want to boot into unix.
i couldnt agree more. take a look into pure64 debian. i think the sid branch is actually more stable than the testing IA32 branch
I just want to thank everyone who helped me. The initial problem was how I burned, I burned the file as opposed to burning the image, like I was supposed to. Then I used the other suggestions on using a 3.5" drive for my MBR. Now I can get to my programming (stupid XP, not supporting 16 bit).
I just want to say thanks to everyone, FreeBSD seems like it is actually a lot simpler to use than the Linux I have seen before. I don't know if UNIX is just easier to use than Linux but this isn't bad.
Thanks everyone,
Alex