Dual-Booting XP with Vector Linux?

[GoodFoodHunting]

I need intallation advice for a dual-boot that I am about to do very soon.

First, I have an old HP Pavilion 754n. It has been slightly altered in that my Ram is now 2 GB (two 1 GB sticks of ram memory) and besides the original 80 GB hard drive I just installed a 160 GB Seagate hard drive.

The printer, monitor and webcams are new or almost new.  But the computer itself is kind of old'ish.  Not bad but you need to know that probably before you dispense with your wisdom...

I will be dual-booting Vector Linux with Windows XP.  At this point here is what I would like to know before starting this:

a.) What OS do I instal first?  Do I leave the XP in there and install Vector on top of it?  Or do I install Vector first?

b.) What version of Vector should I use with my set up?  I have some familiarity with KDE, a lot more with Gnome and none with Flux, Ice or XFCE.  What would be a perfect fit?

c.) What are some cardinal rules NOT to break when dual-booting with Vector?

Thank you ahead of time for all your wisdom.  Your advice will be useful in saving me from some major headaches.   

[stretchedthin]

a.) What OS do I instal first?  Do I leave the XP in there and install Vector on top of it?  Or do I install Vector first?

You want xp in first. If xp is on the original 80gig drive you can leave it there.  Install your second drive as a slave (move the jumper) and then install Vector to the second drive. 
Alternatively, install xp first to the 160 gig (setting the jumpers on that drive to master and the 80gig as slave in that case) and then install Vector to the 80gig.
P.S. During the Lilo part of the install process, you will be given the choice of adding XP as a boot option.  If for any reason this does not work for you during the install, you can do it later with the vliloconf command from the terminal.

b.) What version of Vector should I use with my set up?  I have some familiarity with KDE, a lot more with Gnome and none with Flux, Ice or XFCE.  What would be a perfect fit?

Vector Linux 6.0 standard is the newest release, the default is xfce right now, but you can install Gnome or Kde via GSlapt repositories.  Don't bail on XFCE before giving it a try, though.

c.) What are some cardinal rules NOT to break when dual-booting with Vector?

You are pretty save having 2 hard drives.  You should have no reason to shrink or play with the ntfs partition of windows for any reason during the install.


Do you know how to set up your partitions for linux using the new Gparted utility.
If not try this...http://www.opensourcebistro.com/Tutorial/VL60/01.Installation/page
The partitioning for dedicated drive is a suitable tutorial.
Just remember to double check and make sure you are partitioning the right drive (the one without the xp you want to keep).
Ken

[GrannyGeek]

I will be dual-booting Vector Linux with Windows XP.  At this point here is what I would like to know before starting this:

a.) What OS do I instal first?  Do I leave the XP in there and install Vector on top of it?  Or do I install Vector first?

It's much easier to have XP installed first. Since it's already on your computer, you should install VectorLinux in free space or an empty partition. Example: if you have a Drive D for Windows that's at least 6 gigs in size and preferably much larger, move everything there to Drive C so that Drive D is empty. Then during the installation of VL, you can tell it to use what is now an empty Drive D for Linux. I suggest using the partition tool (GParted with the graphical installer, cfdisk with the text installer), delete the empty partition, and set a Linux swap partition of 512 megs and the rest as a Linux partition. It will be formatted with a Linux file system during the installation.

During the VL installation, you will be offered the opportunity to install LILO, the Linux boot loader. I suggest installing LILO on the boot sector of your Linux partition and using the NT boot loader for booting to either XP or VectorLinux. I explain how to do this in the HowTo's here:
 http://forum.vectorlinux.com/index.php?topic=1073.msg6559#msg6559

Using the NT Loader will leave your Master Boot Record untouched so you will never have a problem booting XP.

b.) What version of Vector should I use with my set up?  I have some familiarity with KDE, a lot more with Gnome and none with Flux, Ice or XFCE.  What would be a perfect fit?

The latest non-beta version of VectorLinux is VL6.0 Standard. It comes with XFce as its default desktop and includes LXDE as an alternate. KDE is the default in VectorLinux SOHO, the latest version of which is 5.9.1. You can add KDE 3.5.10 or KDE 4.2.1 from the VectorLinux repositories to VL 6 Standard if you want KDE. Gnome is not installed with any version of VectorLinux, but there are packages for a complete installation in the
/gsb-2.22 section of the repos.

With 2 gigs of RAM and the amount of drive space you have, you can install any version of VL that you want. I'm partial to VL 6 Standard because it gives you a complete but lean system on which you can build and make your VL whatever you want. It works on older hardware but really shines on newer hardware. I'm also an XFce user with no desire to use anything else. XFce is very easy to use and customize and you can use any Gnome or KDE packages you want as long as you have the dependencies installed. Package installation is very easy through the slapt-get command line programs or the slapt-get graphical interface called Gslapt.

c.) What are some cardinal rules NOT to break when dual-booting with Vector?

Back up your present system before you install VectorLinux, ESPECIALLY if you're going to repartition or shrink your present partitions. If you want to share files between Linux and Windows, it's best to have those files on a FAT32 partition. For a long time, Linux could read files on an NTFS partition but could not safely write to an NTFS partition. Within the past couple of years Linux has been able to mount an NTFS partition under something called ntfs-3g, which is pretty reliable when it comes to writing to an NTFS partition safely. However, I still prefer to avoid writing to NTFS if possible, so the files I want to share (music, photos, e-mail, data from cross-platform programs like OpenOffice and Scribus, etc.) are on a FAT32 partition.

I think it's better to not automount Windows partitions, especially the one that contains your operating system files. It's safer for your Windows partitions and also shields your Linux partition from possible malware that might be on your Windows partition and able to do damage to Linux (little or none of that around, but better to be safe than sorry).
I do automount my FAT32 partition with the files I share, but I leave my NTFS partitions unmounted unless and until I need them. Once I've finished my business, I unmount them.

Any Linux files for which ownership and permissions are important (such as those that should belong to root or those you want accessible only by certain users) should be on a Linux partition, not a FAT32 or NTFS partition. So if you have data that you don't want to be visible to anyone who uses your computer, put it on a Linux partition.

I've been dual booting Windows and Linux for a very long time with no problems. My primary operating system is VectorLinux, but I do have to run programs occasionally that don't have Linux equivalents. I hope you'll love VectorLinux as much as I do!
--GrannyGeek

[GoodFoodHunting]

Sweet..!!  Thanks for the advice and I actually AM itching to try XFCE 

But it will be a wait of a few days at least so until then I guess I have some reading to do eh'? 

Oh, one more thing, I have had MUCH trouble with Linux Distro's recognizing two of my peripherals. 

One is a Brother MFC665CW Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax machine. 

The other peripheral problem I have had is getting Linux (be it OpenSuse or Ubuntu or whatever...) to actually recognize either of my USB Webcams.  A Hercules Dualpix HD and a Logitech Quickcam Express.

I think I have found a solution to the latter and am in the process of getting a Unibrain Fire-i digital camera which is supposed to come with factory made drivers for Linux distributions.  So I am hopeful that will work.  If it does, I have a webcam (fire-wire) for Vector and one (USB) for XP.

I hope the new webcam works... 

[stretchedthin]

One is a Brother MFC665CW Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax machine. 

I can see where this is a problem as Brother does not seem to make a .ppd file for this machine.
They offer a lpr driver and a cupswrapper here....http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_prn.html
Your machine is listed 2/3rds down the page.

The other peripheral problem I have had is getting Linux (be it OpenSuse or Ubuntu or whatever...) to actually recognize either of my USB Webcams.  A Hercules Dualpix HD and a Logitech Quickcam Express.

I don't know anything about the Hercules, but I use both the Logitech Quickcam Messenger and the Quickcam STX and both just work in VectorLinux 6.0.

I think I have found a solution to the latter and am in the process of getting a Unibrain Fire-i digital camera which is supposed to come with factory made drivers for Linux distributions.  So I am hopeful that will work.  If it does, I have a webcam (fire-wire) for Vector and one (USB) for XP.

That's cool, I'll have to google that one. Thanks for the tip.  You can also check out this page and see the Webcams that should be plug-n-play with VectorLinux.
http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html
I hope the new webcam works... 
[/quote]

[wcs]

Most usb webcams are dealt with either by the gspca driver that stretchedthin mentioned, or by the uvcvideo driver, which is included by default in VL's kernel (actually I think the gspca one is included as well, but there have been some problems).

But some webcams require other drivers.
You can search on the driver webpages to see the supported cameras.

If it's a usb camera and it is not automatically working, the way to go is to type "lsusb" as root, then look at the Vendor & Device id for the camera (something like 0c45:62c0) and google it together with the word "linux"... usually something pops up that tells you what the driver is.

(unfortunately, you shouldn't trust the webcam make and model much, as sometimes even the same models have different chips inside).