Looking to dual boot Vista / Linux

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OasisGames
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Looking to dual boot Vista / Linux

Post by OasisGames »

Well, I'm pretty much completely new to Linux, down to the point where I don't even know where to start, so I think I'll just cover the basics of my situation:
I've always been interested in using Linux, and want to take full advantage of my computer's specs with it. I'm currently running Windows Vista, and have a dual-partition 120gb HD (with 49gb free on the non-windows partition) The PC has a 1.73ghz dual-core processor, a fairly nice graphics card, and 1gig of Ram.
I'm looking for suggestions on:
+ What distro I should use for my PC.
+ Simple set up instructions that will allow me to dual boot.
+ Suggestions for programs to expand the capabilities of my computer while running Linux.



Thanks, all help is appreciated.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

Install Ubuntu, it will almost certainly create the dual boot for you.
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pickle
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Post by pickle »

I'd say Ubuntu as well. I've never personally used it, but I've also never heard of another distribution more highly recommended for Linux newbies.

As for programs to expand your capabilities - that's kind of up to you & what you want to try to do with your computer.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
rebus
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Post by rebus »

I suggest installing Vista first then Linux. Vista is known to destroy your partition table.

As for distro, you have a wide variety of choices.

Ubuntu & Kubuntu are quite user-frendly ( first uses Gnome and second KDE which i personaly prefer when choice come down to these two )

Mandrive and Fedora Core are also binary distros that can be called user-frendly.

And check out: http://distrowatch.com/
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OasisGames
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Post by OasisGames »

Well, so far so good, I think I have everything set up. I'm currently installing Ubuntu, and am on the LiveCD version right now. Last time I tried this, I had some problems, but I also didn't create a swap partition. The problem was that GRUB couldn't install, and Vista's boot manager doesn't work as nicely as XP's, so I decided to just see if I could fix GRUB. So here we are, I've repartitioned my hard drive, still have all my files, got my secondary partition's files copied over to my primary (Like XAMPP, so my site still works, I had to reinstall and do some manual SQL set up, but I got that working again)

Well, I'll try and keep everyone updated on my progress, so, back to watching the progress bar...

Success! Thanks guys!


Thanks guys! I got it all up and running!
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