Multiboot in WinXP

[kropoklekor]

Hi,
Just registered with Linux Forum. Looking for info about how to setup/partition planning for multiple Linux distros in WinXP system. Few years back i'm SA in the company with multi Unix(HPUX,AIX,Sun) platform. But familiar with Linux. Hopefully i'll get better overview before put anything in my Desktop.

[Jonathan183]

Hi,
Just registered with Linux Forum. Looking for info about how to setup/partition planning for multiple Linux distros in WinXP system. Few years back i'm SA in the company with multi Unix(HPUX,AIX,Sun) platform. But familiar with Linux. Hopefully i'll get better overview before put anything in my Desktop.

Welcome to the forums.

Partitioning depends on what you intend using the systems for. I prefer to keep user data separate from the OS. During the install I only create a root partition, I manually setup a home partition and modify /etc/fstab to mount it after the install process. Using this approach you can get away with less than 10G for each root partition and share data between distros easily.

I create a root partition for each distro, have a shared home partition, a separate user-data partition for genuine user data like photos and spreadsheets, a swap partition (2 x RAM upto 1GB) which all distros share, and a separate /var partition for my main distro. I'm using ext4 partitions for root home and user-data and use reiserfs
for /var.

My main distro is Arch Linux, info relating to partitioning here

... hope that helps ... enjoy Linux

[nujinini]

...multiple Linux distros in WinXP system. .

Hello and a warm welcome to you kropoklekor,

Pardon me but may ask if you want to multiboot your whole HD with different Linux flavors along with XP? Or are you planning to install linux inside XP (wubi). You may also run many linux flavors using virtualbox hosted by your XP by the way. And vice versa. XP can run on virtualbox hosted by your Linux distro.

Any which way, hope you enjoy linux...

[kropoklekor]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
Jonathan: My purpose to partition is to install multiple distros in single machine. U mentioned about separate /root, what about /boot? and what do mean by sharing /userdata and separate /userdata. Is it ok if i use Wolvix as my main? And why u using different partition format ext4 and retserfs. what the diff between ext3 and ext4?
tq

nujinini: bases on my understanding with old machine like mine with limited memory (512M), its advisable to hdd install rather than vm. Am i right?

thanks

[kropoklekor]

Sorry missed ur q.
Yes i would like to install multiple distros along with XP and XP already installed at the first partition. HDD size 180G.
1st partition 30G NTFS for XP
2nd partition 30G NTFS Data
3rd partition 20G FAT32 Share data XP/Linux
the rest still in raw and reserve for linux distros.
tq

[Jonathan183]

My purpose to partition is to install multiple distros in single machine. U mentioned about separate /root, what about /boot? and what do mean by sharing /userdata and separate /userdata. Is it ok if i use Wolvix as my main? And why u using different partition format ext4 and retserfs. what the diff between ext3 and ext4?

I don't use a separate boot partition, and personally would only do that if I needed to (ie if BIOS of machine does not allow boot from partition anywhere on the hard drive).
By default you store documents etc in your home area, but your home area is also used for storing configuration information for applications which are user specific. Open a terminal and type

ls -la

and you will see what I mean What I call genuine user data is things like photos and documents you create ... I store these separately so I can easily back them up and don't loose them if I decide to reinstall & also choose to write over the /home area (you can re-install and keep /home area information). I just prefer to work with a separate user data partition.

Use whichever distro you like as your main distro

/var tends to have lots of small files, reiserfs is good at dealing with these which is why I use it for /var.

The link I posted had file system information further down the page ... with links to additional information

... others will approach things a different way - like I said 'I prefer to ...'

[kropoklekor]

I don't use a separate boot partition, and personally would only do that if I needed to (ie if BIOS of machine does not allow boot from partition anywhere on the hard drive).
By default you store documents etc in your home area, but your home area is also used for storing configuration information for applications which are user specific. Open a terminal and type

ls -la

and you will see what I mean What I call genuine user data is things like photos and documents you create ... I store these separately so I can easily back them up and don't loose them if I decide to reinstall & also choose to write over the /home area (you can re-install and keep /home area information). I just prefer to work with a separate user data partition.

Use whichever distro you like as your main distro

/var tends to have lots of small files, reiserfs is good at dealing with these which is why I use it for /var.

The link I posted had file system information further down the page ... with links to additional information

... others will approach things a different way - like I said 'I prefer to ...'

Thanks Jonathan. I think i get the basic picture now. Really helpful. Will come back to u if i stuck somewhere.
Regards.