Hi All,

I was wondering what people think of, and has anyone had any experience in, configuring a dual boot PC with XP and Linux Fedora on it...

Im really sick of trying to develop software in XP - i cannot for the llife of me get cygwin to work - anyone got any suggestions?? It just always says that it cant find a couple of specific *.dll's - i've tried to re-install off the web and off a version provided by my uni but to no aviail...

So, I want a dual boot system - XP for Windows applications (Word, games etc.) and for Windows application development using Visual Studio as well as running my music programs (FruityLoops 3.0, Cool Edit etc.)...and a Linux OS for application development in C and Java and also for web browsing...

Thats one of the major issues...what do people think of Fedora for Web Browsing - I use it here at work and it seems to work great but it doesnt have Macromedia Flash installed and im not an Admin so i cant install it...neway, what do people think...?

Cheers,

J-Ral

i run xp and linux but not on the same machine. i did run mandrake and m.e on this machine. as duel boot and even ran mandrake from a folder in m.e.
i have not tried a duel boot of xp and linux.
there is lots of info out there on this. and i cannot rember a good site off hand sorry.
heres a good place to start.
http://www.google.com/linux
here is one i looked at a while back
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&goto=lastpost&threadid=211474

and this has all you could ever need on xp-redhat fedora duel booting!
http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=duel+boot+xp+and+fedora+how+too&btnG=Google+Search

there are one or two other memebers here who use linux and may be doing just what you want to know.
my info,s out dated mandrake 8. and 9x-m.e

i am useing suse 9 pro on the stand alone box i built i like it just fine.

I have run XP and Fedora Core One together on the same machine and have worked on machines running XP and Core Two. They actually play nice together (believe it or not!). One thing, make sure XP is installed first. Then install Fedora. One word of warning! DO NOT let Fedora write to a NTFS partition. It can write to a FAT32, but not NTFS. You CAN read an NTFS from Fedora, that's OK. For web browsing, I'd use FireFox from Mozilla. (Linux and Windows!) Need any more advice? By the way, have fun with Java! I love it.

Hey,

Thanks for the reply - good to see someone else out there had the same idea...

just wondering if you'd be able to go into a little more depth about why Fedora shouldn't write to a NTFS partition - i can understand that it should write to the one that Xp is using but why is it inadvisable for it to create its own and use it?

Am i missing some fundamental point that Unix derivative OS's dont work with NTFS or something??

Cheers!

J-Ral

Sort of. Linux in general (and Fedora in particular) can, in theory, write to an NTFS partition, but it usually causes irreperable damage to the file system or at least the file. If you want a partition that both XP and Fedora can read, create a FAT32 partition. It's just safer that way.

Not to hijack your J-Ral but I'm having the same problem...
With the changes Fedora made to my hard drive, I am unable to complete the Windows install. It gives me the message:
Boot from CD.....Error loading operating system.
When I try to reboot without booting from the CD.
I've tried
# sfdisk --no-reread --heads 255 --force
FIXMBR
FIXBOOT
CHKDSK /Q (Or /P whichever one makes it scan even if it doesn't find any problems)
The only thing I havn't been able to use yet is FDISK /MBR because I can't make a Win98 boot disk...

Your best bet having a dual boot system with Linux and Win98 is probably to use a boot disk to boot to Linux. I wouldn't try to alter the master boot record (MBR) if you're not using an NT based version of Windows.