At 02:42 12/30/06, Greg Purvis wrote:
>You say I want the Linux installation to be bootable...?
>Why is that important now?

Hi Greg

You wrote in your message "New Hard Drive -- A Tale Of
Two OS's" that you wanted to learn Linux by installing
it on your slave hard drive, WinXP being on your master drive.
To learn Linux, you need to be able to run it. For Linux to
run, it must be able to start up. That is, it must be able
to boot.

The way I see it, you have five choices.

First, you could configure WinXP so it offers you a choice
of running either Windows or Linux when XP starts up your
computer. (You already have an XP boot menu. Just hit F8
when XP starts to load. At this point, your only choices
will be versions of XP. You could manually add other choices.)
Since XP is already installed and Linux isn't yet, it won't
be easy to do this.

Second, install Linux and use Linux's loader program (runs
when you boot Linux) to offer you the choice of either XP
or Linux at boot time. Trying to do this, you run the real
chance of hosing your XP system if you make any mistake
while installing Linux.

Third, obtain a third party boot manager program (like
System Commander or Ranish Partition Manager) that will
give you a menu at boot time that lets you choose either
Windows XP or Linux. This is the safest choice so far.

Fourth, obtain a program like VMware or Microsoft Virtual
PC that will run a virtual machine (will emulate an imaginary
computer) inside Windows XP. Install Linux on this imaginary
computer and run it as an application from inside XP.

Fifth choice: Get another computer (an inexpensive one maybe)
and install Linux on it. You then have to computers, one
with Windows XP and one with Linux. You can even learn to
network them.

Regards,
Bill 

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