Windows and Linux on one computer.

Hi everyone, today im buying myself a new HD for my computer project and i thought it would be great to run linux on my system. The trouble is, i know nothing about it (although im willing to learn) so i would rather have windows on there still so i can play games etc and work on the computer whilst im learning linux. I was going to have Windows and windows programs on 1 HD and linux and linus bits and bobs on the other.

Is this possible?
Could it cause any problems, i.e errors?
How would i switch between them, im guessing i would have to do something whilst the computer is booting up, but i dont really know

Any help would be really helpful, thank you.

James

Yeah that is how i have my system set up. I have windows on my SATA drive and Linux on a IDE drive and pick which that I want to boot from in bios.

Yes you can. It should be fairly simple to set up also (I read the other day about a guy who set them up on 2 HDDs and installed both of them with the drive set to master - not sure how this worked, but it seemed to give him some extra options). It's fairly simple to do though, this PC has just the one HDD and used to be dual boot with windows/mandrake. Some distributions have the boot selector things set up as part of it to install very easily and quickly, others are a bit more fiddly. Basically, when you boot up it gives you an option and you select which OS you want to boot into, and if after a time defined by you (normally default at 10-15seconds) it will boot to whichever one you set as default if you haven't selected anything (i.e. you pressed "on" and then went to go and get a drink).

The best place to ask on these forums would be the Alternatate OS forums though. Take time to choose your distribution though, and get loads of advice on which one to go for, and remember people tend to be very loyal to their particular one! Some are easier to install and use, some are harder, but more flexible, some are better for certain uses than others. Investigate, take your time, and be prepared to ask a lot of questions, get stuck a lot, and smack your head into the table when you can't work out how to do something as simple as run a program initially. It's worth it in the long run!

Ok ill go ahead and do that, ill also check around on google so i have a bit of basic information as well. Ive been wanting to do so much work to my computer but exams have taken over, but as of monday 9:45 i will be exam and work free for the summer so i can finally have a go

Thanks for the replys

What I understand (from when I installed Red Hat a lil while ago) that just install XP, then install the Linux distro, setup the boot loader and you should be able to select your OS every time you boot.

I just fixed a guys computer that someone else had installed Linux and Windows on....

It was set so when he turned the computer on he had the choice of windows or linux...

It was only on one hard drive though

when you turn on your pc lilo or grub will give you the option of which os you want to boot. most distros automatically install lilo/grub on your pc, so you shouldn't have to worry about it. it's the same thing if you're installing and have 2 hd's. just make a ext3 or reiserfs partition on whichever hd you want to install to, and then pick that partition during the install.

also, i highly recomend creating a fat32 partition where you keep all your data. both windows and linux can read and write it, so wichever distro you're in you'll have access to all your documents.

go with Fedora version if you didnt play with DOS a lot.

dracos said:

I just fixed a guys computer that someone else had installed Linux and Windows on....

It was set so when he turned the computer on he had the choice of windows or linux...

It was only on one hard drive though

Click to expand...

Yeah, you can do that with xandros too. Xandros is very easy to use too.

-1cem4n

PS: shouldn't this be in alternative os?