easiest to dual boot with Vista and SATA

[Cynical Angels]

I just bought a 750Gb WD SE16 Hard drive
because I wanted to get rid of my last ATA hard drive.
now with this I will have all SATA drives (a 300 a 500 and the 750)
now since my old ATA has the OS on it, I was going to start over..
but I want to dual boot Vista with a version of Linux.
I have installed Red Hat on a computer before, but I've never tried to dual boot
I tried the shrink the volume thing to try to dual boot on my old HD, but that didn't work.

I wanted to do this, this weekend. I have a copy of Fedora, Mardriva, SuSE and Ubuntu
but here's my questions:
a) Which one is easiest to dual boot with Vista
b) which do you install first?
c) which works best with Beryl, because I definitely want to have that.

My purpose to do dual boot is to learn some flavor of Linux.. and if I didn't play games, I'd practically not need Vista at all. (I'd probably still need to know it a bit, since I do Desktop Support but I want to learn Linux to broaden my horizons)

so really what I want to know is the above
and the steps I need to do the dual boot. I plan on doing it this weekend.

thanks

The Cynical One

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

I would suggest you to go for Ubuntu. Fedora, Mandriva and SuSe are good too but Ubuntu is a little bit easier for new users imho.
setting Dual boot is very easy. All Linux distros set it up by default. Install Vista first and create free space ( 10GB is enough ) using Vista's Partitioning Tool. Start Linux Installation ( any distro ) and select free space in Partition Section. Installer will create/format partitions out of free space and setup dual boot itself.

Good Luck !

[Cynical Angels]

So shrinking the volume will work huh?
well I'll give it a try after work tonight.
I'm probably going to go with Fedora, unless there is something better
I'm just at least a little familar with Red Hat, so that's why I'm leaning that direction.

[devils casper]

Its a bit complicated to shrink Volumes and I wont suggest you to create volumes. Fedora's installer creates Volumes by default but all other distros create ext3 partitions only.
If you are planning to install Fedora then I would suggest you to create ext3 partition for Fedora before installation.

[Cynical Angels]

So I should install Vista and not allocate all the HD to it... and then install Fedora?

[devils casper]

Vista has its own partitioning tool and you can shrink partitions with it easily. Allocate all disk space Or ( better way ) create a partition for Linux during installation of Vista. Delete that partition through Vista Partitioning Tool later on. It will create free space. Install Linux in that free space.

[DimaAKAreset]

as for my 2 cents, if you have my luck you will be in a tight squeeze, i have fedora 8 but it had problems recognizing my SATA drivers as my bios was set to recognize them as RAID vista installed fine on raid but fedora did NOT then i switched to AHCI(ohci) fedora installed fine but vista does not recognize ahci too well and i had problems on that end... let me know your results and your settings!

[Cynical Angels]

I installed Vista, and then installed Fedora, but it will only go into fedora.
it also asks for a login.. and I remember setting a password, what is the login name it's looking for? and is there a way for the boot menu to be set up?

[Thrillhouse]

it also asks for a login.. and I remember setting a password, what is the login name it's looking for?

You probably also set a username during installation. Do you not remember what that is? If you forgot, try root for the username and then the password you remember for the password. However, the first thing you should do after logging in is to create a regular user for everyday usage of Fedora. It is not recommended to login graphically as root in any Linux distro.

and is there a way for the boot menu to be set up?

Yes, the file that controls that is /boot/grub/menu.lst. It has entries for every OS it detects. When you boot your computer and the boot screen comes up and says it will boot Fedora, what happens if you hit a key on your keyboard? This should direct you to the menu where you can select which OS you'd like to boot. My guess is that there is an entry for Windows in menu.lst but that you just can't see it from the first GRUB menu.

[Cynical Angels]

I'll give root a try when I get home. I don't recall a name, and I tried the name I would usually use.

yes I chose the grub menu.. so if I hit a key it will bring up the list?
the fedora screen pops up pretty quick.

ha, I'll have to wait 4 hours to see if it works...