thinking of installing linux - have a few questions first

**quweeze** · 01-31-2009

Hello i'm new to linux and i'm thinking of installing it on my computer. I have a few questions first. Probably the most obvious is which linux is right for me? I mostly play high end games, work on iternet, and do alot of work on my computer for school/work with MS office. Second, my hd is only 100gb so i want to install it on my external hd which has a TB in it. How complicated is this to do and can i still use the rest of my external to store windows files. I want to make it a duel boot so i can run vista ultimate on my internal and then when i want to use linux run it off my external. Thanks for the help.

oz · 02-01-2009

Welcome to the forums!

Check the link in my signature for lots of good information on getting started with Linux. You'll find a couple of quizzes there that might help you to pick a few starter distros. You'll also find a link there with equivalent applications for Linux.

For Windows games, you might be able to play them using WINE under Linux, or you can dual-boot between Linux and Windows as you suggested above.

Hope you will enjoy running Linux...

**Jonathan183** · 02-01-2009

Welcome to the forums quweeze

Take a look at the polls for distros ... no one can tell you the best distro for you.

You can install Linux to an external drive an boot it when you want to use Linux. One of the things to be careful about is where the bootloader is located (by default the MBR of the first hard drive will be written to - you can change this ... just be careful about default location for bootloader).

You may find the games need Windows to run ... you can try Wine in Linux, or run Windows in as a Virtual Machine ... but I would dual boot (Windows and Linux) which you are effectively going to do with the external.

You create partitions on the external drive, usually 2 or 3 for Linux (a root, swap and home partition) and can create additional partitions for data.

I suggest you try a few live CDs and see which Linux distros you like

keep in mind that they will run slower from a CD than from a hard drive.

Ed: not sure what happened when I tried to post the reply first time round ... ended up with a thread title new user I had created

thanks for sorting it out ozar ... or whoever sorted it

oz · 02-01-2009

Originally Posted by Jonathan183

Ed: not sure what happened when I tried to post the reply first time round ... ended up with a thread title new user I had created

thanks for sorting it out ozar ... or whoever sorted it

Yeah, that was weird.

I think you were posting when the thread got moved, so it left your post as a new thread. Anyway, all taken care of...

**MikeTbob** · 02-01-2009

Be sure and check this link for a Distro quiz, it's pretty good at determining which distro may be right for you.
zegenie Studios Linux Distribution Chooser
Good luck and do let us know which distro you settled on.

**quweeze** · 02-01-2009

thanks for the help i think i'm going to try Mandriva. Could someone ether point me in the dirrection of something that we explain what partitioning is. For now how i understand them is setting aside part of the drive for a sperate operatng system. can i move files between the partititions freely or is it more complicated? Also if i have about 800GB free right now how big should i make the partitions for linux?
My other queston is could someone better explian the MBR or point me in the dirrection of something that can. I don't want to make my computer explode when i do this. If there is also i guide to installing on an external hd that would be handy. Thanks

oz · 02-01-2009

Here's a partitioning howto that you can read over to get a better idea of how it works:

Linux Partition HOWTO

Most distros will take care of partitioning automatically, or allow you to partition manually during the installation routine. Just don't allow the installer to partition the entire drive unless that's what you want.

Partition size is a matter of personal choice, as long as each partition is big enough to handle any data intended to reside on them. I usually keep a rather simple partitioning scheme and make my own something like the following:

Code:

/ (about 6 to 12 GB, ext3)
swap (about 1GB, swap)
/home (about 6 to 12 GB, ext3)

You can find some MBR tips here.

Thread Tools

Display

thinking of installing linux - have a few questions first

Posting Permissions