dual boot Gentoo?

can you dual-boot gentoo? I have Win-XP Pro installed...... and am nearly finished with the Universal (lvl 3) CD download. Other than my prior problems with my built in ethernet and mobo driver problems.... anything i should watch for to keep Gentoo from smacking me up its b**** like Slackware does?

for note... am installing debian on an old gateway compy i was given.... (p3 450... 256Mb of pc100.... ati rage fury pro.... 20Gb HD)

As far as I know you should be able to dual boot any version of Linux with Windows, so you should be fine. Just make sure that you install and setup the bootloader properly so that you can still get into Windows when you want to. I have never used Gentoo, so I can't really offer any advice, other than good luck. Also be careful with the partitioning.

Edit:
I just installed Debian 3.0 r4 on one of my computers a couple of hours ago. It seems to have an easier install now than one of the earlier versions I used (I think it was 1 something). It was on an AMD K6 266 @ 250 with 192MB of PC100/133 and a 405MB hard drive. Much easier to install on that hdd than on a 100MB Zip disk, which is what I had done with the previous version I used.

405Mb HD? Debian 3? YER JOSHIN' ME!!!!! NO WAY CAN BE DONE

I ran woody on a 170MB hdd not so long ago, and had room to spare. Which I promptly filled with useless servers like apache, samba, a mailserver, etc.
A Debian base install which is fully functional (can get on the internet and stuff, even with ppp) can be done in 50MB easily. The ISO you install it from is 30MB only. Of course you can't install kde and other desktop stuff on it, but xclient libs and a few chosen X program will fit.

For your networkproblems, just get a recent 2.6.x kernel and chose the forcedeth driver when compiling.

For dualbooting: you need to install the Linux bootloader in the MBR (lilo or grub). Then edit its config file to add a Windows entry for booting. I prefer grub: it looks better in the default bootmenu and has neat features like the changing of the settings while booting or the chainloader.

I ran an older version off of a 100MB Zip disk, it is really easy to just setup the essentials without X and get it that size. When you do LFS (Linux From Scratch) it can get down to just a few megabytes (about ten), including Apache. I also ran BeOS 5 Max on that 405MB hdd, and had about 5MBs left after the install, so I didn't have a page file, but had most of the essentials, including a lot of the development programs.

hmm.... didn't realize that about linux..... as for Grub , i've had ALL my problems with Grub. Lilo hasn't given me one fit with dual-booting.

Yes, you can dual-boot Gentoo with Windows XP. I actually installed Gentoo on my Windows XP box, last week, and I had no problems. They actually cover that exact scenario in the Gentoo online installation manual. I used LILO, as I like/understand it better than GRUB.

ok... i have the universal/level 3 install of it. I'm sorta afraid to attempt it, as every attempt at linux i've tried the last 3 weeks has ended up HOURS of reinstalling windows and everything because Linux WILL NOT accept the drivers for my mobo/ethernet/video/sound.

that's the only thing keeping me from making the complete switch, is I can't get those drivers working.... that.... and everytime I try slackware... it eats my harddrive...

Yes you can dual boot it. I am doing so right now and am getting ready to boot back in to Gentoo in a minute.

As for the reinstalling windows. If you aren't installing over your windows partition and you just have to keep reinstalling because the boot record is screwed up, just boot from you XP install cd and use the recovery console. Log in as Administrator and type fixmbr (or maybe it's fixmbr c:\). That'll take about 2 minutes including boot times and will get your XP install back to normal for you!

Yes, bootloader issues are easy to fix with a windows cd or a knoppix cd. If you continue having trouble with your drivers in linux, don't hose the OS, post about it and we can walk you through getting the dang things working.

TollhouseFrank said:

ok... i have the universal/level 3 install of it. I'm sorta afraid to attempt it, as every attempt at linux i've tried the last 3 weeks has ended up HOURS of reinstalling windows and everything because Linux WILL NOT accept the drivers for my mobo/ethernet/video/sound.

that's the only thing keeping me from making the complete switch, is I can't get those drivers working.... that.... and everytime I try slackware... it eats my harddrive...

Click to expand...

For the first 3 or 4 times I tried Linux I had exactly the same problems. Unless you percivere you will never get to learn it. There is plenty of support on the internet for it. For my first proper atempt at using Linux I decided to go with a Gentoo stage 1 install. This was possibly the best descision I ever made as I learned a lot more about how Linux works just from installing the OS. I had a few driver issues at first, but with a few searches on the internet and recompiling the kernel 5 or 6 times I soon got everything working.

My first few tries were using bloated distos like Mandrake and Fedora. These are easy to install but I was put off by how slow they were. After getting Gentoo running I was impressed with how customizable and fast it is. It's package management system also makes it very easy to maintain. I'd really reccomend that you try and stick with Linux for a bit and try and solve your driver problems, it will be well worth it. I've only been using it a few weeks and have already switched over my main rig to Linux and am soon going to do the same with my laptop.

honestly, mandrake and fedora rock on my system. I guess its cause i got a gig of ram.... its absolutely smooth and faster than winxp.... BUT THE mother (**()#*)*#*#)*% DRIVERS ARE DRIVING ME BVATTLYYY!!!!!!

I have a gig of ram and mdk and fedora are slow as **** compared to my gentoo install. And that's before i reinstall gentoo from a stage 1 with the ldflags optimization and without useing prelinking.