Dual Booting Win ME and Lycoris Linux...

[joyntkid]

I want to try out Linux, and thought I'd try out the best for newbies, Lycoris. So i got it downloaded(thanx to my trusty DSL) and burnt on 2 CD's. Now what do i do?
I have a 25 gig hard drive, and want to partition or wutever a 5 gig HD for Lycoris. How do i do this, preferably free.

Celeron 512mb ram(i think, we upgraded)
Compaq SC-140S
IDE CD-R/CD-RW 4x4x32
NVDIA video card(like 8 mb or something crappy)

i don't know wut else u need to know.

If u can help, IM me at joyntkid on AIM or post here.

[baafie]

I think you'd better post at the one of the forums of this site.

[s0be]

ok, here's your easiest way to do it:

backup everything you cherish in windows, for soon, it shall be gone....

make sure you have a dos formatted disk(not fat32, for easy's sake)

start up your linux install(whether it's a bootable cd or boot disks)

when it comes to partitioning, create a 20 gig partition and leave it unformatted, then a 4.5 gig gig partitition and if it's an option, tell it to use that as / . Create one more and tell it to use it as swap. Select what you want to install in linux. When it gets to asking you about lilo tell it to install in the beginning of the root linux partition Once it gets done installing(I'm assuming you can make it through that all by yourself, if not, I'm s0bellzard on AIM) log in as root.

once you get the # prompt type:

fdisk /dev/hda

(assuming /dev/hda is your main harddrive)

it'll say something about large drive problems, don't worry about that. press p and hit enter and it should show you a bunch of partition entries. Take note of the one labeled as linux native. I'm guessing it'll be /dev/hda4, but I could be completely wrong.

next type the following commands:

dd if=/dev/hda4 of=/linux.img bs=512 count=1
mkdir /tempmnt

insert the floppy disk(make sure the little thingy is flipped towards write)

mount /dev/fd0 /tempmnt
cp /linux.img /tempmnt

and now you're set. Install windows(2000 or xp only, this won't work for 98). Copy linux.img from the floppy to the drive that you install windows on. Edit boot.ini and add this line at the end:

C:\linux.img="Linux"

and edit the line and set the timeout to something like 7.

/*
S0Be
*/

(any questions, IM me at s0bellzard on AIM)

[Aeroe]

bah... i always used partition magic, but mandrake and lycoris have their own easy to use partitioners. of course i guess you can "learn" by the above method. who needs to that when there's point and click?

the distros then have a os selection screen prompt (lilo). when done, well i haven't used one that didn't provide it.

anywho good luck with lycoris, the distro with 3,000,000 missing dependencies... hehe. but hell you get to play solitaire during the install.

lycoris also has a nice support forum *hint hint*

[n_ick2000]

s0bellzard, that is the best way to do it if you want to get linux to boot from the NT boot loader. I am doing it that way and it works. However, that is not the easiest way.

Most linux distributions will come with some sort of boot manager. Most likely, LILO or Grub. Basiclly you can install winME first. Then the installer for the Linux should give you options about how to set up the boot manager, boot sector, etc. It really varies depending on the Linux distribution. Most linux distributions will have direct support for dual booting OS's. If you get Lilo, you should just be able to configure your WinMe settings in whatever Lilo configuration program they give you and you should be fine.

Just remember that everything varies in the different Linux Distributions.