OSDev.org

Well, okay, - but 5 CD seems to be unlikely big - do I need all of CDs to download only if I want a simple graphical user Linux OS with the gnu tools like gcc, make, nasm, etc. ?

For the default install you only need 3 CD's for SuSE 10.2.
For gcc, etc. you need all 5

try linux livecd

I see Mandriva Linux LiveCD as my favorite for now, it can install to a hard disk too as I'm reading right now... And it's only one CD. I like minimalistic operating systems [but not only command line as I'm not very familiar at the moment with *nix ]
And knownig POSIX architecture is not bad...

@com1: What distro and bootloader are you using? Do you partitioned the disk yourself or the Linux installer did? Do you had Windows XP or 2000 and only with a single NTFS partition?

@Dex: I will, for more security, try repartitioning my hdd myself...

Regards,
inflater

I think it wasnt worth to download 700 MB's of Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring, LiveCD version (that could install to the harddisk), and to just fill a perfectly good CD... It wouldn't even boot up ->

It booted up to the boot selection screen. I selected the language Slovak, which wasn't ever mentioned on the site, that Mandriva could support my language. And it displayed progress bar "Loading Linux kernel", in English of course, after that, a splash screen with progress bar.

It didn't go much long, I waited 5 minutes and no activity at all, neither progress bar, nor the dvd-rom LED.

So I rebooted the system and set the boot options to be verbose.
I found that it would "wait" in:

Unmounting initrd... [OK]

So I waited two minutes. After them, a new line popped up regarding something is loading again:

Loading udev... [OK]

So I waited 3 minutes and nothing... No disk activity at all. So I gave up and booted to Windows.

I was using physical HW for purpose, if its live cd I think I can't clobber anything with that.

I think my configuration is okay:
Pentium 4 1,8 GHz, 256 MB system RAM, GeForce4 MX440 64 MB VRAM (o'clocked but working properly), ...

I'm not sure to even install it to my hard disk (by downloading the whole DVD version), it sounds more risky than it ever was in the beginning of my topic... it just more scares me off.

I will now try to search some FAQ for this distro (but searching for LiveCD faq?!... sounds silly)

Regards
inflater

DSL livecd intro
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8121628070.html
The livecd list
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

IIRC, hedinux livecd was impressive
http://www.hedinux.org

@inflater, did you test the checksum before burning it ?, as i said i have not used Mandriva Linux 2007, only just got it, so i hope it as compatable as the other ver i alway use, your spec sound ideal.
I have always bought box sets, so have never down load it, the only distro i down load is backtrack2, which is a great live distro.
Let me know if the checksum is right.

Hmm, I tried to download Kubuntu and I watched the video how to install it and how to dualboot it. In there, they let Ubuntu to use 30 GBs of unallocated space. Unfortunately, I have only 7 MB unpartitioned, the rest is a big 55 GB partition... I have 11 GB (not GiB or Gb) free and I would like to resize that partition and subtracting 4 GBs from it to unallocated space. Unfortunately, my big partition crosses the 1024 cylinder boundary and 2 GB boot boundary and PartitionMagic is informing me that this partition may be not bootable, even that I didn't make any changes to it. Of course it is bootable...

[URL=http://www.imghosting.eu/view.php?img=pmagic.PNG]
[/URL]

Now I'm scared. If I would resize that partition, it would be unbootable? It IS bootable now (you can see it in that screen, I haven't changed anything in there)...
Or I should Linux do the shrinking? This seems more risky than it is...

Regards
inflater

Well I read that most PCs after year 2000 do not have this limitation. I never experimented with partitions (well, not in this PC). And if Windows XP runs on my machine perfectly now... My BIOS is from 2003 and it has LBA enabled... Can I do the shrinking safely?

ANY posts welcome!

Always make backups when messing with filesystems

Buy an extra hard drive, they are so cheap it's not worth risking your main partition

You should be able to download a live CD for gentoo. IIRC, this CD will boot using GRUB which is good for doing the following.

1. Make a partition. However you do this.
2. Boot from the live CD. Go into it's console.
3. Follow the tutorial here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... t=1&chap=4

Do everything except installing GRUB or LILO. The point is to boot into Linux using your live CD by stopping GRUB before it boots and giving it a command line.
root /dev/<disk|partition>
kernel /<kernel filename>
boot

That way you can just boot into Windows just fine, but when you would like to use Linux just insert the live CD or anything that can bring up a GRUB console.

Also to note you are using the LiveCD to install Gentoo onto the partition, then later you use it to boot onto that partition.

FYI: I have shrinked a NTFS partition to install Linux on before. I can not remember the details, but it was fairly easy to do.

I have tried n tested nearly more than 30 linux distros and
screwed my hard disk in the end .....The one's i have
tried are RedHat,PCLinuxOS,PCQLinux,Mepis,Kubuntu,
Knoppix (installed on hard disk using sudo knoppix-installer),
Slackware , Debian,Ubuntu,Suse,Mandriva,FreeSpire,
DreamLinux,Monkey Linux,SLAX derivaties,WOMP (pretty cool),
Byzantine OS,Belinix (a solaris clone),FreeBSD the list is endless
Finally I also made my own linux distro (source based)
compleate do it urselves kind of stuff... This was somewhat
frustrating .....

Compiling gcc on a 500Mhz K6-2 with 64 mb ram - took
more than 5 hours --

There is nothing much in the distros ... they all are
built from the same source.... Personally i think
Slackware simply rocks!!! Also check out Slackware
mirrors it's awesome .. It's the work of the great
Peter Voldekering

I also was thinking of creating a linux specially for
OS Developers ... But i got somewhat frustrated
when my hard disk got screwed up and all i have
done vanished into thin air --- I learned the importance
of making backups -- the hard way--- Is anyone here
intrested in such a project ....

Note: When it comes to bootloaders Lilo is easier to setup
# liloconfig
/* now chose your settings in expert more*/
/* do some editing in /etc/lilo.conf*/
#lilo
You are ready to go....

I'm not sure about the FS resizing, I've never actually been successful resizing an NTFS partition. Because it's closed source everything is reverse-engineered and the tools are a little bit more unstable.

I really recommend kubuntu - and with that you really don't need to worry about GRUB, itll install it for you and autodetect your windows partition. It works like clockwork. Also the device detection and autoconfiguration in ubuntu is, imho, second to none. Better than windows, in my opinion.

Plus, ubuntu uses the Apt package management system, which is also pretty awesome. Want GCC and friends? just type: And it'll do everything for you.

JamesM

PS: I have two harddrives, one is dedicated to my home files and is ext2, the other is part windows part linux.

ntfsresize worked absolutely fine. The code for ntfsresize seems extra cautious, I had to run Windows XP's defragmentation program several times in order for ntfsresize to let me size down the partition to the size I wanted. Furthermore, this is LONG before ntfs-3g was available, which has provided flawless r/w capeabilities with the NTFS partition (though not guaranteed, no problems have been reported thus far). In other words, we can conclude that the reverse-engineered knowledge of NTFS is sufficient enough to at least resize it.

I'm another one for gentoo.

Read the install documentation over and over again. Understand it like the back of your hand. Then you have a good understanding of how things work and how to install linux harmlessly alongside windows. Even if you ultimately decide not to go with gentoo, you'll understand how to set up any other distribution the way you want. That is the beauty of the philosophy gentoo has.

Besides, how can anyone prefer "sudo apt-get install <package>" over "emerge <package>"?

I once preferred LILO, but it had this certain bug that lasted forever which affected several different machines of mine (in which case, I can't understand how it wasn't addressed immediately?) where it would just print "9" continuously on boot. I've gotten used to grub and don't see any reason to touch LILO now.

If I remember correctly, Mandrake (now mandriva, I think someone mentioned) has a graphical partition manager which lets you resize NTFS partitions.

Excuse me though, I'm a bit drunk tonight as it is welcome week here...

anyways...

Sorry for a late answer, school just started today (where i have that lead pipe? at least I'm on the last "grade" -> after this and successful tests named "Monitor", hurray, gymnasium! )... and I have internet only from 4:00 PM if I aren't on weekdays or holidays. And before installing Linux to my harddisk I have 3 times defragmented my hard disk, because there were some "un-defragmentable" files -> big and pretty old ISO images, movies, etc. so I deleted them and defragmented again - My "story" begins:

I tried that Kubuntu Linux installing onto my harddisk. I backed all my
confidental data to two DVD's, and I let Ubuntu automatically resize and repartition
my harddisk by specifying how much I want to left on the drive C: (Win32 partition)
as I've saw a video installing Ubuntu. When installation was complete, I thought:
"Now the hard disk is pwned", but the reboot explained it: I had a working
dual-boot system without any data corrupted! I was first embarassed why
after the reboot Ubuntu did disk test, the same as Windows. But after that,
Linux worked as a charm, I could even print from my hp deskjet 3550 without
any driver-search on the Internet, and it autodetected and configured automatically
my sound card!, actually it is a Realtek AC97 ALC (do not know the exact number).
w00t! I am taking away my bad comments about Linux right now!

But, on the other side, it detected my ADSL modem too, which was good, but it
didnt worked very well. If I would now (in Windows) restarted the PC and booted
into Kubuntu, it would halt, during sys initializaton, because Windows automatically
initialized the modem and resetting the PC doesn't reset that modem. So it halted
during boot, so I selected in GRUB to be verbose (cxacru = Conexant AccessRunner,
the chipset that is using my Microcom modem) and it displayed similar to this:
The only thing I can do is rebooting, or turning the PC off. If I would turn the PC
off, and after a while back on, this would reset the modem and its Windows
initialization, and Kubuntu will boot normally, but without net support:
The second problem, well, its not a big "problem" though
In GRUB, I have the first entry to boot Ubuntu Linux, the second the "safe-mode",
third, memory test, fourth is the "Other operating systems" entry and right under that,
"Windows XP Professional". How can I move the Windows entry from the bottom to the top,
as it was the default OS to load? I'm not familiar with Linux though, but I think I
can handle this "Kate" text editor thing and I can navigate in the root ext3 partition
without problems (it is like in Windows) for overwriting some text file...

I also customized it, like changed wallpaper, created desktop shorcuts to e.g. command line, etc.

//EDIT: Is it me, or installation of KUbuntu along with GRUB speeded Windows booting from 18 seconds to 6 seconds ?!

Thank you for your answers!

Regards,
inflater