General noob Linux questions...

I have wanted to get linux for a while and I think I will want to use it with my Sager(Compal IFL90), I will be using it with windows vista.
I want to use Linux for everyday use and vista mainly for playing games so I have been told that the best option for me is to dualboot, so I just have some questions concerning dual boot and linux.

1. How would Hard Drive space be divided between the two? or is it just used by both?

2. Can I set it up to where I download one program for Linux and it can also be used by windows? Like with music files can I have a music library in linux and it also can be used for windows?

3. I read that linux can read windows files easier than windows can read linux files, what exactly does this mean?

4. Aside from gaming I will need to use excel, powerpoint etc. I imagine linux has software equivalent to micrsoft office, but does it inclued excel, powerpoint etc.?

Thanks

 

1. Hard Drive Partitions depend on your usage patterns. Personally, I have three partition; one for Windows, one for the standard Linux directory (/), and one directory for personal files (/home). Just make sure you have enough space on your windows partition for games. The standard directory can be 10-20 GB or less, and /home can take up the rest of the space. However, this is assuming that Linux will be your main OS and that you'll only go into Windows for gaming.

2. Program installations are NOT shared across multiple OS. However, files can generally be accessed across OS (at least from Linux).

3. Although it depends on your Linux distro, your distro may automatically mount your Windows partition for you so you can access all your files on the NTFS (Windows) partition. Normally, only read access is supported, although you can install another NTFS driver for Linux for read AND write support. On the other hand, Windows doesn't like to play nice with other operating systems; Linux uses the ext3 file system so you'll have to google some stuff.

4. Open Office is a cross-platform, java-based solution. Test it out on Windows first. Of course, I've been using Open Office over Microsoft Office for a few years now since I'm too cheap to PAY for Microsoft Office. And yes, Open Office does have spread sheet, power point, etc. capabilities.

 

The division of disk space between Linux-only and Windows-only is entirely up to you. But there are other considerations (discussed later).

There is a distinction between programs and data. Programs written for one OS will not run on the other (without at least an emulator). However, data files can be interchangeable if you have compatible applications on each side. There are dozens of music library programs for both Windows and Linux that will organize and play MP3 files.

The same is true for many file formats. The desire for interoperability can be so strong that people will reverse-engineer file formats for the express purpose of writing a Linux tool to handle them.

When data is stored on a disk, it needs to be organized and laid out according to a set of rules. These rules, and the software implementing these rules, are called a filesystem.

Out of the box, Windows supports only two filesystems: NTFS and FAT. Linux, however, supports well over a dozen. While Linux can read and write NTFS and FAT, most Linux installations prefer a different filesystem called ext3. Windows does not ship with ext3, but you can download and install a third-party package that implements the ext3 filesystem so that Windows can read and write it.

At this point, you start having to pay attention to details, such as Linux's uneven support of NTFS (you can read files easily, but writing files is subject to some restrictions). Support for the FAT filesystem is perfectly complete, but FAT sucks, which is why even Microsoft is moving away from it.

An example: You create two disk partitions, one for Windows (NTFS) and one for Linux (ext3). You install the ext3 filesystem package on the Windows side so that Windows can read/write the Linux partition, and use Linux's NTFS filesystem to read the Windows partition.

Another option: You create three disk partitions, one for Windows and Windows programs (NTFS), one for Linux and Linux programs (ext3), and one for data shared equally by both sides (FAT32). Windows and Linux will be able to read and write the FAT32 partition without any special setup or restriction. However, it makes disk organization a little clunky, and many Windows apps still make the assumption of One Enormous Disk Named C:.

The long and short of it is: If you want to share data files between Windows and Linux, you will need to do some advance planning to ensure both sides can access whichever filesystems are going to be shared.

Go visit http://openoffice.org/ and see if they meet your needs. OpenOffice is available in both Windows and Linux flavors, and can read (and often write) many Microsoft Office data files.

Schwab

 

Open Office is not "Java-based". You can use a good deal of Open Office for real work without having Java installed at all. I've used OOWriter and OOCalc extensively without any need for Java. However, some parts of OO do require Java. The OOBase tools to manipulate databases are an example of parts of OO which require Java. Some wizards also require Java.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

I asked about file sharing and similar programs because I imagine myself wanting to listen to music on windows if I need to use a Windows specific program, so i was just wondering if my whole library would have to be transfered.

Also I was curious if I would have to download firefox 2 times one for windows and on for linux etc. Seems like I will.

I have 160GB So I plan to split it in two. Should be enough for windows to have my games and linux my multimedia, not that I think I will ever use up 100gb in total.

Also, I know CSS can run on linux, how well can it run?

 

Yes, you will.

 

Based on what a pig Windows is, you'll probably want 100G Windows and 60G Linux.

Cascading Style Sheets or Content Scrambling System?

Schwab

 

Counter Strike Source.

 

Counter Strike Source

 

The way I decided how much space XP would have was to speculate: +/-4GB for a fresh install, 1.13GB for AOE3, 8.9GB for my Steam games, 1.3GB for EE2, etc. Leave a little more space for the page file and possible some more games in the future and you're good to go. Currently I have 30GB for XP, and 80GB for Linux.

PS, I have run CSS on Ubuntu before. Use this howto to get it done: http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/wiwimod/index.php?page=HOWTO+Steam&back=HOWTO+INDEX+Wine+Games

Also, if you have trouble with text in Steam, then you must copy Window's Tahoma font from the C:\Windows\Fonts directory over to wine's Windows directory. PM me if you have any problems, you probably will!

 

You don't have to use your entire hard drive right away. If you're not sure how much hard drive space to allocate to each OS, then just leave some unpartitioned space, I would try to leave free space in the middle however, so you can extend partitions instead of just creating new ones (resizing partitions can be done with (g)parted in Linux).

So, graphically, the partitions could like this:

|-----Windows-----|----------Free-Space----------|---Linux---|Swap|

 

If you're willing to tweak your configuration files, it's possible to use the ntfs-3g driver to read and write to NTFS from Linux. Ext2 IFS provides XP read and write support to Linux ext3 (ext2 + journaling), but I'm not sure if it supports Vista yet. As for CS:S, performance is lower in Linux than in Windows; I'd recommend sticking with Windows for gaming. Wine recently had some Steam installation/update issues as well.

 

What distro do you recommed when I first thought of getting linux(2 years ago) I was looking at red hat but it seems that ubuntu is the concensus pick, I am a first time linux user...

Also how does the installation go, just order the cd, install it and thats it?

Because I will have to install vista 32 bit first and then linux, so when I partition the drive for vista 32 I just assing it x Gb and then install linux and give it x amount of Gb space?

 

My vote goes to Ubuntu, install is pretty simple, see the Ubuntu help page for details: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation
(note: you can burn the CD yourself if you don't want to wait for a CD)

There's also a thread here talking about the Wubi installer, or something like that... apparently it lets you install Ubuntu from Windows. It seems to work well for people, myself, I avoid Windows as much as possible, so I haven't tried it (and likely never will)

 

If I am going to transfer files from my xp to an ubuntu laptop, outlook, mp3 and video files is there any compatibility issue or can a str8 up transfer with a flash memory or through a network work?

 

I see you are going to transfer outlook files, what software are you moving to?

You can just copy the files to Ubuntu but some methods are better than others. Mounting a shared drive and doing "cp -rp /mnt/shared-drive/* /home/blah/" for instance is not the best way to do a bulk transfer quickly. Creating a tar with smbclient is faster. (Check the doc for details.) Or if you run an ssh server on your XP machine, scp is an option. There's also rsync you can look into.

 

it would be better for you to install 1st then install ubuntu, just allocate the space for windows, leave the rest free, and when installing ubuntu, allocate the sapce you need, and you might also want to have a fat32 partition for even easier file management, as like a storage space.

 

do you mean hav ea different fat32 partition or format windows as fat32?

 

I believe cheziyi meant to have a separate fat32 partition that both windows and ubuntu can access.

 

yes, thats right.

 

Ill just post here not to create another thread, but I have another machine running windox xp 256 ram 1.5 GHZ Pentium 4, with 65 GIGs 15 which are partioned fat32, I want to try linux on this machine which will just be for regular use, can I use linux on a VM on this machine?

 

With only 256MB of RAM, I wouldn't think you'd want to try running Linux in a VM on that machine. Upgrade the RAM and you might consider it, or you could just install Linux directly.

 

You COULD, I wouldn't recommend it though. You do not have enough total ram to give satisfactory performance. If the VM is running, Windows will slow to a crawl, and the Linux VM will be even worse. Better just to repartition it and dual boot (or, do what I would do, just wipe out the Windows partition completely).

Also, with a machine with that little ram, I would recommend using a lighter weight distro like Xubuntu.

 

yeah i figured the specs wherent good enough to run linux on VM, I think I will just dual boot, if I install linux will I need a dual boot prgram to recognize it at startup or will it recognize it by itself?

I just reformatted that machine so I dont need to transfer any file, but will I have to reformat it again to repartition it? or when I install ubuntu will it let me repartition?

Xubuntu is just a "klighter" version of ubuntu right?

 

You can manually repartition it with a LiveCD, so, no, you don't need to reformat it again. It will also automatically detect and add support for dual-booting upon installation. It uses the boot loader "GRUB" to manage which partition you boot into.

Xubuntu is basically the same a Ubuntu, except it uses Xfce as the default Desktop Environment instead of GNOME. It also replaces a couple other applications with lighter weight alternatives (like, Abiword and Gnumeric instead of the OpenOffice suite). Other than that, the underlying system is the same. It uses the same repositories, etc. It's also possible to change an existing Ubuntu system into a Xubuntu system and vice versa by installing and reconfiguring the proper packages from the repositories (you can also switch to Kubuntu this way, which uses KDE).

 

pardon my ignorance but what is liveCD?

BTW, abiword is a word processor and Gnumeric is ?

If I put mp3 files into the fat32 folder will it be recognized on both xp and linux? I will leave disckC with 15 fat32 gigs, and then partition 20/20 for xp and linux.

and thanks for all the help, ill download and install linux today/tomorrow

 

LiveCD is the install disc of Ubuntu, but without installing it. You put it into your drive and you can run Linux without actually putting anything on your hard drive (unless you download some stuff, but when you restart that stuff gets erased, as far as I know).

Gnumeric is either a spreadsheet or calculator, judging by the name. I have no idea.

About the MP3 files, I think so, but honestly I have no idea. I think someone told me that it wouldn't be recognized on both.



I have a question as well. I have a SanDisk Sansa MP3 player, and it's plug 'n' play with PlaysForSure on Windows. Would it be directly recognized by Linux, or would I need some special drivers? Or would I be unable to plug it in (reason I wanna plug it in is to transfer my music from Sansa to HDD)?

 

Gnumeric is a spreadsheet.

 

Yes, a fat32 partition can be read by both Windows and Linux, so any files you want to share between the two partitions can be put there.

Technically a "LiveCD" is any operating system that boots into a full environment. A LiveCD loads itself into your ram, so, generally any changes are lost when you shut down the computer, however, you CAN access your hard drive and save things to it if you want. This can be useful for system repair, as it will allow you to access the filesystems on the hard drive even if it can't boot from the hard drive properly.

I believe the Linux distro to first popularize the LiveCD is Knoppix, which was intended to let people try Linux without installing it, though it was possible, it was not (at least initially) intended to be installed onto the hard drive.

The Ubuntu CD is both a LiveCD and an install disk, so you boot into the LiveCD environment, and install the system onto the hard drive while booted into the LiveCD environment.

I don't know for sure, but basically, if it shows up as an external drive in Windows, you'll have no problem with it in Linux. If it's made to Sync with say Windows Media Player, then, you may be able to get it to work, but you might be out of luck too.

Sometimes there's a transfer mode setting you can change too. You want to switch it from "MTP" (Microsoft's Media Transfer Protocol) to MSC or UMS (different acronyms for the same thing, Mass Storage Class, or USB Mass Storage).

Which specific model to you have? It'd probably be easier to help you if we knew the model number.