dual op systems - fedora 5 and xp

Livzz

Livzz

New Member
I just got fedora 5 as a frrebie with a magazine, and i'm keen to see what its like...
i know you can have dual operating systems on one computer, so i was wondering if someone could give me a bit of a tutorial in installing fedora on my computer next to windows xp...
If i can do it, can i set which one starts up by default? because if i did have two one my computer, i'd rather have windows as the default...
thanks for your time....
Paul
 
Before you do anything...BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM!!

I'm assuming you already have windows xp installed and you have one hard drive, right? Well, the first thing you need to do is make two partitions on your hdd, one for Windows and one for Fedora. To do this you need a partitioner such as Partition Magic (which you have to pay for...you can find a free one somewhere online). Create the partitions with however much space you want on each operating system.

If you dont have any operating system (or want to reinstall windows) you could create two partitions when installing windows. If you do it this way, make sure you install windows first. Windows will complain if you install Fedora first because Microsoft wants a windows world only.

So once you have windows install on one partition and another blank partition, put the Fedora cd in and reboot. Then just go through the Fedora installation.

As far as booting goes, something called a boot loader will be installed when you install fedora (called GRUB i think). Everytime you boot your computer it will ask you which operating system you want to boot. It will boot the default one (which you can change) after a few seconds if you dont pick.

Partitioning is really the hardest thing to do but once thats done, everything else isnt too bad. I'm currently using Ubuntu...never tried Fedora. Now that im using linux ill never go back to windows. Good luck!
 
You forgot ONE BIG THING when dual OSing with XP and Linux on the same drive. Only Windows runs with a single partition. Linux uses more then one such as the primary, root, swap, boot, etc. due to it being a totally different type of OS. When dual OSing a second drive here when using the updated MS fdisk to limit the size of the 98SE to be XP partition at the time a ubuntu boot manager on floppy could readily load either Fedora Core 4 or XP when it simply displayed all partitions on the drive. When you choose the MS partition Windows loaded. The same went for Core 4.

The Grub loader uses a prompt similar to the Command prompt or old style dos window for entering manual commands. For a "Linux newbie" the best place to start is trying a multiple OS setup on a secondary and not primary drive so you still have a working system. If you then need help there are online reference guides as well as some good forums dedicated to Linux. First get familiar with the Linux not MS commands to simplify things a little.
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm#_Making_a_Simple_grub_Booter_Floppy
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=144209
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialRecoveryAndBootDisk.html#GRUB
http://infospace.abcnews.com/_1_ZZGTJF025GSYVM__info.abcnws.toolbar/search/web/linux+tutorials

The above links will be helpful in getting you started. But there's always a few more.
http://www.ss64.com/bash/
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/
http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc5-tips.php
 
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When I set up Ubuntu, the installer would autoconfigure a single partition into all the the different partitions used by the OS. Im not sure if Fedora has that option...sorry bout leaving that part out.
 
If the disk there is complete it may have the full installer included. The Core 4 run earlier this year was installed from downloaded iso images burned to disk. But when a friend couldn't get a SATA drive running with XP as a stand alone the second drive was loaned out until the SATA is finally recognised by the XP installer or he simply gets another ide drive to run as the primary. He should have gone with a strictly SATA board from the start. But he refused to go with a PCI-E model board. But Livzz will still need to get familiar with the Linux commands anyway. It's definitely a different animal to work with. One other thing to note here is that Linux has it's own form of fdisk often referred to cfdisk for creating, resizing, and removing partitions.
 
i have a second hard drive (sig), but i'd like to keep that for my other stuff...

so i'm gonna have to partition my 74Gb?? i didn't expect that...
i have a spare 40Gb IDE drive, maybe i'll put that back in my computer and install fedora on that. I dont think i'll use it much so 40Gb will be plenty.

Also, can fedora read off my already installed SATA drives, formatted with NTFS?
 
Now that's where you can easily miss the rewal point where one OS will not see the other. In fact the only way to see both type OSes and partitions alike is to boot from a Linux Live distro like Knoppix for dvd which also has a cd image. Ubuntu and a few others are also available. What happens there is a totally self contained OS compressed on a removable disk. In fact the Knoppix Live cd is great for repair and retrieving files from either a Linux or MS type of partition where vFat, Fat32, Fat 16, MSDos, or NTFS like NT,, 2K, and XP use.

I always keep one of those onhand for gaining access to damaged or corrupted drives. Even with Linux on a second drive something like this will be a useful tool. But don't expect your games and other programs to be running anytime soon under Core 5. More and more you are finally starting to see some manufacturers(video, sound, etc.) making Linux drivers available for their product lines. Some newer softwares are now starting to be friendly to both Linux and MS. But it does take time.
 
so....
1) can i install fedora onto an IDE drive instead of my current SATA drive? and if yes, will it still come up as an option on the "select OS menu" at bootup?

2) once installed on the IDE (or sata if i have to) will it be able to read the music/dvds and other files i have on my current NTFS drives?

thanks for your time...
 
Most versions of Linux installed to the drive have to be loaded from the Grub prompt unless a batch file auto loads a distro. This is where a boot manager comes into play for loading either an MS product or Linux. Being that XP would be on the primary with it's own boot.ini file along with a master boot record you won't see an option there to load FC5 or any other distro as a rule. It certainly won't be what you would expect when having XP as the second OS with 9X-ME or NT-2K on the primary partition.

Booting from a floppy with a boot loader was the easy way to choose the partition where the OS there would then load up. The same could be done with a bootable cd with a ubuntu or other boot manager. Granted XP is a little different then NT it still uses an NT core. The following shows one easy method for dual booting MS with Linux. http://www.computing.net/howto/advanced/linuxnt/
But since you are going to run a Red Hat version with XP http://www.redhat.com/advice/tips/dualboot.html

Chainloading Windows with either Grub or Lilo is another method to look into. A couple more links here with discuss that along with editing the XP boot.ini file.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pclim/help-desk/dual-boot/dual-boot.html
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html
(Gee I'm a newbie there too! Had some fun just getting Core 4 to even run.)
 
Fedora 5... I installed it...
It's really nothing special. I would really reccomend PCLinuxOS. It's really easy to install, has it's own graphical installer (which is included on the LiveCD so you can test it before you install. It also defaults to KDE, which I find to be much easier than GNOME (which Fedora uses by default)
And it also uses Lilo, which I know (I use it myself) will find your windows partition after deleting GRUB. Lilo will replace GRUB [windows] and provide it's more graphical interface. For you I'd guess the second option in that bootloader would be for Windows, so booting back into Windows would be as easy as pusing the down arrow on your keyboard and pressing enter.
All you need to do is boot into the live CD, click the install icon on the desktop, partition your hard disk (shrink your windows partition so you have at least 5 GB of free space, and create an ext3 partition in the free space) and continue with the install. The install
should only take about fifteen minutes and you can boot into it immediatly afterware. It also includes all the programs you need to do basic and advanced computering.
Find it at PClinuxOS.com

EDIT: You may have to configure you BIOS to boot from the drive you install Linux on before the drive with Windows.
 
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this is turning out to be more than i thought...

all i want is to have Fedora 5 (because i've got it, and some of the computers at uni use it) On my computer, along with my current windows installation...
I would like the computer to boot into windows by default if i'm not there to press "down>enter" at a menu...

but according to what you've all told me, to do this i've got to partition my main harddrive?? cant i install it on a separate IDE drive?

I'm sorry if i'm asking questions you might have already answered above, but i'm very new to dual OS, and i dont really understand half of what you're talking about...
 
And that is where you will get tripped up too easily. For anyone to learn how to dual boot with any combo of OSes the best way would be to put in a second hard drive to experiment with. When installing Windows onto the first partition of a second ide drive(preferred method for newbies) you will have to temporarily disconnect your single OSed primary drive. Otherwise especially with XP the detection of the primary installation will effect the mbr and boot.ini files. But even if you goof up a few times on a second drive your primary will remain intact.

"this is turning out to be more than i thought..." is understating it a little there. Linux is still far from a simple "point and click" OS to begin with. Although some of the newer distros are far easier to use for those coming from an MS background it still relies mainly on it's own form of command structure closer to UNIX then MSDOS. Are you ready to learn a new language? Start reading over the materials at the links posted earlier to get a better idea on that.
 
ok... i think i've got an idea of whats involved now,
thanks for your advice and assistance with all the links, hints and tips!
i'll give it a go after my uni exams are over...

cheers!
Paul
 
Yes, you can install on a seperate IDE drive (my Fedora 5 VMware install uses that)
But if you don't want to risk messing up your computer, get a copy of vmware player (free, www.vmware.com/player ) and install it through there. This is software to emulate a "fake" computer so you can install this using fake hardware. I've installed Fedora 5 this way, and I know it works.
If you (or anyone else) decides to use VMware, just open one of the .vmx files in VMware player.
To install with a CD: use redhat.vmx and have the disk in your first CD drive.
To use an ISO file: Put the ISO in the folder with all the other files and open redhat_use_this_for_iso.vmx (name the ISO file fedora.iso)
This will work for any OS that's a LiveCD or you can install from CD or you have to burn yourself.
 

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