hi, i want to set up my hard drive so that i can boot to either windows or linux. what is the easiest and cheapest way to do this? thanks forum members.
1) Figure out if you have spare space on your hard drive.
2) If 1), download Your Linux Of Choice CD image and burn it to CD. Put into CD drive, and tell the partition manager what you want to do. It'll resize partitions for you and modify the MBR as necessary.
3) If not 1), buy a bigger hard drive. Proceed to 2).
If you don't understand anything I've talked about here, learn that before you EVER get to Linux.
Most main stream distributions of Linux work similarly. If you're completely (or mostly) new to Linux, I'd suggest Ubuntu though. It's probably the easiest distro for a starter and the community is super.
eh, ubuntu, of all linux distro's I try to stay away from the odd linux stuff they do. Learn Debian or fedora if you want to do linux. both are rather simple and complex at the same time. Backtrack is a decent live(cd)usb distro, meaning you never have to install to try.
Grub isnt very hard to configure, once you figure out your partition table and how grub names it, its rather very simple to get setup, on a complex install I could take 10 mins with grub. simple as quick as 2.
1) The Ubuntu standard install CD is also a Live CD... allowing you to try before you install and install from a full GUI envrionment. Very handy for someone just starting out with Linux.
2) Ubuntu takes care of the grub install and config for you. Why confuse someone who is just starting out with Linux by making them configure their boot loader themselves? Most of the time that's going to end with them getting frustrated and dumping Linux.
Nate, would you care to elaborate on that "odd linux stuff" Ubuntu does? Last I checked Ubuntu runs the Linux kernel... and the kernel, per se, is really all that Linux is.
all that non full root access they restrict. they dumbed down linux so much you dont learn anything but how to click something to make it work.
I know it still gives full access but in more restricted ways, like having to type sudo for EVERY root command you want to type. the best way to learn what not to do is open a term and remain logged in as root and type rm-rf NO DO NOT TYPE THAT IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT IT DOES. though it wont do anything without the final char and spacing.
Fedora is very simplified but it still leaves you full access when you want it like any other distro. Ubuntu is not standarized like other distros, ok I know that means nothing for EVERY distro other than 2.4 and 2.6 kernel has no standard other than following the GNU license. and I was giving a very rough example of a grub install, Gentoo now even has a gui installer, and thats known for being one of the most hardcore of linux distros.
but whats wrong with learning what your system does to make things work, let alone let you know how it works so you can fix it when you need to recompile your kernel.
IMO, sudo is the way things should be done. It leaves behind an auditable trail of who actually did what instead of anyone being able to log in as root and then you don't know who it was that did what. Also, it's very easy to get full root access. Launch a terminal and type in sudo -s, bingo, instant root terminal. Logging into a GUI as root is a VERY BAD IDEA... and every distro I've ever used will tell you that. Even on a system that does give you direct root access you shouldn't be doing it. It is just too easy to fubar your system from a root GUI. That's why Windows is so prone to getting viruses, because most home users are running as an administrative user (the Windows equivalent of root) all the time. All the power and control that Linux gives you is still there... it just also has a friendly interface that lets you do things that way if you prefer.
Ubuntu is just as standardized as any other distro. In your original post you even recommended Debian. Ubuntu is based off Debian, they just put a lot of work into making it easier to use. I don't understand why Linux users have such a problem with that. Most people are not as computer savvy as us and if we ever expect Linux to gain mainstream acceptance it needs to be made easy enough for average people to use. Face it, 99.9% of computer users will never even consider recompiling their kernel. Most users, if you tell them they need to do that, will end up saying nevermind and going back to Windows or OSX. That is why Canonical is trying to make Ubuntu easy to use.... and that's why it's "Linux for Humans" and not "Linux for Uber-Geeks".
Anyway, I'll concede that Fedora is an okay distro for new users. I used it for a while and it was in all the CS labs in college but I never really liked it that much personally. I would probably never recommend Debian to a new Linux user though. When it comes to distros for new users, I'd also recomment Mint or possibly Sabayon. I haven't used Sabayon much myself but it's supposed to be pretty good.
I suppose I'm as confused as ardichoke is. How exactly is preventing people from COMPLETELY fubaring their shiny new Linux system a bad thing for new users?
Funny how nobody makes the same claim about the "just intuitive" Mac OS. Everything's hidden on there, too... If users want something that works, why give them something they can transpose one character in and kill everything they've ever known?
sorry, lack of sleep from the past week and personal rage against ubuntu inspired that earlier.
Im just one of the many linux users who dont agree with what ubuntu team is trying to do in a way. Linux should be simple, but not so simple that you never need to know wtf is going on.
Along with I havnt used ubuntu in many years.
my rage against the sudo command... well I wasnt aware of sudo -s
when I lasted used ubuntu few years ago, they gave you no option to actually CREATE a root password, so you had to manually single user it and being still new to linux had to figure out how do I get a root term so I could run 20 root commands without having to type sudo in front of each of them, and being used to opening a new shell in any other distro the frustration of having to remember to type that when I forgot every few commands and having it error my results just pissed me off.
oh and preventing someone is a bad thing :P
how are they going to learn if they dont fuck up once or twice. I learned DO NOT TYPE THIS IN LINUX rm-rf the hardway, but I had fun doing so.
Ubuntu doesn't prevent you from doing anything. It just gives you an easier alternative in many cases. Additionally, you don't seem to understand how sudo works Nate. sudo simply executes anything you pass to it as root. Plain and simple. It's an alternative way to give users tightly controlled root access to the system. If you dig into it what you find is you can use sudo to give users access to certain commands as root but not others. You should take a look at /etc/sudoers on an install with sudo set up, it's a very elegant but powerful system. This makes it a very nice security tool.
The default Ubuntu install, of course, gives the user created during setup full sudo access to run anything as root. If you actually want to log in as root on an Ubuntu system it is as simple as running sudo passwd which will let you set a root password. From then on you can log in as root like you normally would. I did this on a testbed that was running Ubuntu Server since we weren't using a GUI and I wanted direct root access to it. It's actually not possible to disable root on any Linux distro I know of. The way distros "disable" root is simply by generating a very large random password and setting that as the root password. Actually removing or disabling the root user would break a lot of daemons and other things that have to be run as root.
I respect your opinion about having to screw things up once and a while to learn... but I also respectfully disagree. I consider myself pretty darn good with Linux (and I would hope so, I'm a Linux system admin) yet when I was first learning I didn't make any major system-ending mistakes. I read... a lot. Man pages, tutorials, Linux forums (a lot of the people at the Ubuntu forums are incredibly smart), etc. That and I used Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop and was always looking for ways to make it smoother, get longer battery life or tweak this or that. Some people learn by screwing things up (which is entirely possible in Ubuntu, just slightly less easy) some people learn other ways. About the only time I ever really screwed anything up was the first time I attempted a Gentoo install... and that was back in college when I wasn't really up to snuff enough to custom compile a kernel. I've since taken Gentoo from a blank disk to full Gnome UI, customized and running smoothly in under 24 hours (X11 and Gnome take a LONG time to compile... I ended up going to bed while they were).
EDIT: I just read this and realized how off-topic we really got... green gold, did you get your dual-boot system set up? Do you have more questions?
yeah, I passed out as I stated after I posted my first rant, sorry for pulling this off topic.
along with I haven't used ubuntu in a few years now. Maybe I'll give it another go when I repair my laptop. but I was aware of sudoers. I just didnt like the trouble it made you go back then just to setup root the first time, I was used to every other distro asking me to set my root pass during install, then I login when needed as root and do 6-10 things then log out as needed.
I wasnt refering to root as being disabled, just more hidden from the normal user.
but yeah, grub is the best option for dual booting any system, which I vote they need to learn the core of how grub works anyways, its fairly simple once you understand how linux names everything. and everyone should know this anyways. automount is not always possible.
The other option instead of dual-booting is to get a live CD of Ubuntu or Kubuntu and load the CD under windows. You should either get a autorun or you can navigate to the cd and run the WUBI installer which will allow you to install Linux in the NTFS partition and uninstall it with the all programs feature in windows.
Before I die from a thousand flames... it is only a suggestion.
The other option instead of dual-booting is to get a live CD of Ubuntu or Kubuntu and load the CD under windows. You should either get a autorun or you can navigate to the cd and run the WUBI installer which will allow you to install Linux in the NTFS partition and uninstall it with the all programs feature in windows.
Before I die from a thousand flames... it is only a suggestion.
Yeah, I was going to mention this as well. Wubi is nice for trying out Linux. Just keep in mind that it's running emulated so it will be slower than an actual native install.
Yeah, I was going to mention this as well. Wubi is nice for trying out Linux. Just keep in mind that it's running emulated so it will be slower than an actual native install.
True that... another easy way to try linux is to run it inside a virtual machine like Sun Virtualbox. This provides an easy and somewhat safe environment to learn linux before partitioning your drive which isn't really as big a deal as some people make out.
In my opinion the best way to learn linux is to have a spare machine, like that old pentium 4 thats collecting dust in the basement and just wiping the hard drive and installing a linux only environment. For noobs I'd try Mepis or an Ubuntu flavor, but i'd try out different Debian based distro's just to get a feel for what is the similar.
Comments
2) If 1), download Your Linux Of Choice CD image and burn it to CD. Put into CD drive, and tell the partition manager what you want to do. It'll resize partitions for you and modify the MBR as necessary.
3) If not 1), buy a bigger hard drive. Proceed to 2).
If you don't understand anything I've talked about here, learn that before you EVER get to Linux.
Let us know if we can help!
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
Most main stream distributions of Linux work similarly. If you're completely (or mostly) new to Linux, I'd suggest Ubuntu though. It's probably the easiest distro for a starter and the community is super.
Grub isnt very hard to configure, once you figure out your partition table and how grub names it, its rather very simple to get setup, on a complex install I could take 10 mins with grub. simple as quick as 2.
2) Ubuntu takes care of the grub install and config for you. Why confuse someone who is just starting out with Linux by making them configure their boot loader themselves? Most of the time that's going to end with them getting frustrated and dumping Linux.
Nate, would you care to elaborate on that "odd linux stuff" Ubuntu does? Last I checked Ubuntu runs the Linux kernel... and the kernel, per se, is really all that Linux is.
I know it still gives full access but in more restricted ways, like having to type sudo for EVERY root command you want to type. the best way to learn what not to do is open a term and remain logged in as root and type rm-rf NO DO NOT TYPE THAT IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT IT DOES. though it wont do anything without the final char and spacing.
Fedora is very simplified but it still leaves you full access when you want it like any other distro. Ubuntu is not standarized like other distros, ok I know that means nothing for EVERY distro other than 2.4 and 2.6 kernel has no standard other than following the GNU license. and I was giving a very rough example of a grub install, Gentoo now even has a gui installer, and thats known for being one of the most hardcore of linux distros.
but whats wrong with learning what your system does to make things work, let alone let you know how it works so you can fix it when you need to recompile your kernel.
ok, im done ranting for now. bbl
Ubuntu is just as standardized as any other distro. In your original post you even recommended Debian. Ubuntu is based off Debian, they just put a lot of work into making it easier to use. I don't understand why Linux users have such a problem with that. Most people are not as computer savvy as us and if we ever expect Linux to gain mainstream acceptance it needs to be made easy enough for average people to use. Face it, 99.9% of computer users will never even consider recompiling their kernel. Most users, if you tell them they need to do that, will end up saying nevermind and going back to Windows or OSX. That is why Canonical is trying to make Ubuntu easy to use.... and that's why it's "Linux for Humans" and not "Linux for Uber-Geeks".
Anyway, I'll concede that Fedora is an okay distro for new users. I used it for a while and it was in all the CS labs in college but I never really liked it that much personally. I would probably never recommend Debian to a new Linux user though. When it comes to distros for new users, I'd also recomment Mint or possibly Sabayon. I haven't used Sabayon much myself but it's supposed to be pretty good.
Funny how nobody makes the same claim about the "just intuitive" Mac OS. Everything's hidden on there, too... If users want something that works, why give them something they can transpose one character in and kill everything they've ever known?
Im just one of the many linux users who dont agree with what ubuntu team is trying to do in a way. Linux should be simple, but not so simple that you never need to know wtf is going on.
Along with I havnt used ubuntu in many years.
my rage against the sudo command... well I wasnt aware of sudo -s
when I lasted used ubuntu few years ago, they gave you no option to actually CREATE a root password, so you had to manually single user it and being still new to linux had to figure out how do I get a root term so I could run 20 root commands without having to type sudo in front of each of them, and being used to opening a new shell in any other distro the frustration of having to remember to type that when I forgot every few commands and having it error my results just pissed me off.
I personally felt like windows bob was in control
well im gonna go pass out once again.
how are they going to learn if they dont fuck up once or twice. I learned DO NOT TYPE THIS IN LINUX rm-rf the hardway, but I had fun doing so.
The default Ubuntu install, of course, gives the user created during setup full sudo access to run anything as root. If you actually want to log in as root on an Ubuntu system it is as simple as running sudo passwd which will let you set a root password. From then on you can log in as root like you normally would. I did this on a testbed that was running Ubuntu Server since we weren't using a GUI and I wanted direct root access to it. It's actually not possible to disable root on any Linux distro I know of. The way distros "disable" root is simply by generating a very large random password and setting that as the root password. Actually removing or disabling the root user would break a lot of daemons and other things that have to be run as root.
I respect your opinion about having to screw things up once and a while to learn... but I also respectfully disagree. I consider myself pretty darn good with Linux (and I would hope so, I'm a Linux system admin) yet when I was first learning I didn't make any major system-ending mistakes. I read... a lot. Man pages, tutorials, Linux forums (a lot of the people at the Ubuntu forums are incredibly smart), etc. That and I used Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop and was always looking for ways to make it smoother, get longer battery life or tweak this or that. Some people learn by screwing things up (which is entirely possible in Ubuntu, just slightly less easy) some people learn other ways. About the only time I ever really screwed anything up was the first time I attempted a Gentoo install... and that was back in college when I wasn't really up to snuff enough to custom compile a kernel. I've since taken Gentoo from a blank disk to full Gnome UI, customized and running smoothly in under 24 hours (X11 and Gnome take a LONG time to compile... I ended up going to bed while they were).
EDIT: I just read this and realized how off-topic we really got... green gold, did you get your dual-boot system set up? Do you have more questions?
along with I haven't used ubuntu in a few years now. Maybe I'll give it another go when I repair my laptop. but I was aware of sudoers. I just didnt like the trouble it made you go back then just to setup root the first time, I was used to every other distro asking me to set my root pass during install, then I login when needed as root and do 6-10 things then log out as needed.
I wasnt refering to root as being disabled, just more hidden from the normal user.
but yeah, grub is the best option for dual booting any system, which I vote they need to learn the core of how grub works anyways, its fairly simple once you understand how linux names everything. and everyone should know this anyways. automount is not always possible.
Before I die from a thousand flames... it is only a suggestion.
you cant hide
you cant hide
True that... another easy way to try linux is to run it inside a virtual machine like Sun Virtualbox. This provides an easy and somewhat safe environment to learn linux before partitioning your drive which isn't really as big a deal as some people make out.
In my opinion the best way to learn linux is to have a spare machine, like that old pentium 4 thats collecting dust in the basement and just wiping the hard drive and installing a linux only environment. For noobs I'd try Mepis or an Ubuntu flavor, but i'd try out different Debian based distro's just to get a feel for what is the similar.