Hi everyone I am Salil, presently in Philadelphia but originally from Mumbai. I am a complete newbie to Linux.
I have a Dell Inspiron Laptop 1100 with windows XP as the OS. I wish to install Linux on it but keep XP. I do not have a floopy drive on my computer.
Is it possible to install Linux without having to uninstall XP? What is the best way to proceed?
The reason I don't want to uninstall XP is that certain hardware (Wireless LAN Adapter - TrueMobile 1300 802.11g made by Broadcomm) and power management features are not supported on Linux platform. Some wireless LAN card driver is out there but it is commercial and expensive.
Can someone help ? Thank you.
Regards, Salil.
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Salil Wadhavkar wrote:
Is it possible to install Linux without having to uninstall XP? What is the best way to proceed?
Yes. To install Linux on your hard disk, you will need a spare drive / partition with atleast 3-4 GB free space.
Since you are a complete newbie, I'd recommend you try out a Live CD Linux distribution like Knoppix / Gnoppix. The Live CD does not require a hard disk installof Linux and will run the distribution directly off the CD!
You can move onto an "installed" distribution when you get comfortable. Good luck. Sweet experiences. :)
From: linuxers-bounces@mm.ilug-bom.org.in [mailto:linuxers-bounces@mm.ilug-bom.org.in] On Behalf Of Salil Wadhavkar
Is it possible to install Linux without having to uninstall XP? What is the best way to proceed?
If you already have a second partition on your laptop, the installation of Linux should be a breeze. Start Linux installation using a bootable CD, delete the second FAT32/NTFS partition & proceed with creating partitions on the free space during installation. Many Linux distributions automatically setup dual booting for you during the installation. I already had a second partition on my Dell Latitude and it took me no more than 30 minutes to setup Fedora Core2 test1.
If you do not have a separate partition which I think is the norm on laptops (laptops are supposedly meant for managers who wouldn't care about partitions :-), and one of the reasons for total data corruption on laptops is not partitioning your data), try using a Windows based partition resizer which resizes without data loss (I am not aware of any free utility). Create a new partition and proceed with the installation.
Nilesh.
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Salil Wadhavkar