Dual Boot system

Hello mushroomcloudwarrior!

I myself am running successfully WinXP, "Linux Mint" (Ubuntu-based) and "Mandriva One 2007 Spring" on an Inspiron 6400 at the moment, so, obviously, it is possible. By the way, whether a specific distro works well with your system can't be decided without more information on the model and hardware of your notebook... A good address to start with is "http://www.linux-laptop.net/" where you can find lots of useful information on various systems (sorted by vendor, including Dell) running various flavours of Linux.

Ah, and one more point. No offence, but does no one read the previous threads these days? There are plenty of threads dealing with concerns similar to yours. For example:

1) concenrning LiveCDs for testing a distro
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=11285

2) pros & cons of using Linux
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=11016

3) partitioning
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=10273

4) Inspiron 6400 + ATI + (K)Ubuntu (as an example)
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=10294
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=9541

5) distro-recommendations
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=11151

6) recommended partitioning-tool and more recommended distros
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_linux&thread.id=10326

Furthermore, you should have a look at "http://distrowatch.com/" to find a distro that suits your needs.

I hope these links are of some use for you.

floba

Message Edited by floba on 08-20-2007 02:08 PM

Thanks for the post, I think i wasn't clear enough in my post.. Can my Notebook come pre-installed with a dual boot? (win xp + Linux) or will i have to just get it with an OS installed, and then re-format to suit my desired settings?

Hello mushroomcloudwarrior!

I just got it wrong. Sorry. Concerning your question: as far as I know you can't buy a Dell-notebook that ships with two OSs preinstalled. But any posts that can teach me better are welcome.
Nevertheless, it isn't difficult to install a second OS afterwards!

floba

you shoul be able to I got xp ubuntu and suse,it can be a bit hard but it works greate

Hi, Thanks for the quick reply. Honestly sorry for not reading previous posts! Which OS do you think i should order it with? i mean which one is easier to set up the second OS?

The easiest multi-boot setup is to start with a completely blank disk, set up you partitions then install any windows operating systems to their predetermined partitions, followed by installing any Linux operating systems to their partitions.

The windows OS is loaded first because the windows installation overwrites the master boot record (MBR) without any care to what is already there.

The blank disk approach is good if you are building your own system, but with pre-orders getting a blank disk can sometimes cause problems.

If you are ordering a system and your options for OS are windows /or/ Linux and you want to run both, get the windows laptop. This already takes care of the windows installation for you. The only problem being that you do not have the Linux partition set up.

With this scenario, you need to defragment windows, run the "clean up disk" utility, and then defragment again. After this, you are ready to install the Linux OS. At this point you can just set up the partition with either a dedicated partition editor or one that comes on a LiveCD (like gparted with Ubuntu).

It is always important to figure out your partitions before actually creating them. On my hard drive that has XP and Ubuntu, I let them share a partition for documents, music, and the like. That partition table looks like:
[--XP--][----/home----][--Linux /--][swap]

If you have a smaller hard drive, or one that has primary partitions from the manufacturer (Dell) then just a straight dual boot may be the best idea:
[recovery][media direct][--windows--][--Linux--(swap)]

Linux does not need much room. 10GB would be more than enough for the casual user. I have documents and pictures and 6GB of music on this laptop and have only just hit 10GB. Vista needs at least 20GB. Allow room for growing on each OS partition (both if you have the space).

[edit] You can not change the partitions of a mounted filesystem, so you must use a boot disk of sorts (the LiveCDs run in RAM and allow you to change partitions on disks if needed).

Message Edited by kevinf311 on 08-21-2007 02:24 PM