Dual boot question

[seraf]

Hey I just ordered slackware 12.2 and I plan on running XP on one drive and Slackware on the other. I was wondering if I could dual boot them with out having to mess with windows mbr like maybe use F8 at start up and tell bios to boot the second drive first? I'm kind of new to linux so im not sure if I can do this or I have to set up lilo for it or what.

[Dapper Dan]

During the Slackware install, you'll be offered the opportunity to create lilo as your boot loader. You'll be able to specify which OS to boot into by default. Once Lilo is set up correctly, it will be the first screen you'll see when booting and will give you the choice of booting to either Windows or Slackware. Good luck!

[devils casper]

Best way is, unplug or disable Windows OS harddisk in BIOS during Linux installation. Plug-in back after Linux installation and add its entry in Boot Loader of Linux.
In this way there won't be any chance of mistake and both of your disks will be independent of each other.

You can use Linux boot loader to boot either OS or select boot device in BIOS. Its easy to configure Linux boot loader instead of selecting device in BIOS every time.

[seraf]

Thanks I guess I will take Casper's method and just unplug it and set up lilo to boot it later. I've experienced how wrong it can go when it does go wrong with setting up ubuntu to dual boot on the same drive as windows. I doubt it could but stranger things happen to me. Oh and on another note how well is slackwares hardware detection? last linux distro I installed was Ubuntu 5.10 but I'm not sure what happened there. Install seemed fine but there was strange vertical lines I noticed right off and when I close some things they stay stuck on the screen even though its not running and some menues dont even show anything unless I move the mouse pointer over them so it looks like just peices of the window. Same applies for terminal i had to highlight everythign to see the changes in the window. I want to make sure I am not going to have that problem with slackware.

[seraf]

im not sure if I should have put that on a different thread sorry if I should have.

[devils casper]

Slackware will detect most of hardware but I prefer Ubuntu over Slackware. Ubuntu is much more new user friendly than slackware and its latest version support almost every piece of hardware.

It looks like you had Graphics Card problem in Ubuntu 5.10 version. One has to install Proprietary drivers for Nvidia and ATI Graphics Card. Driver installation is very easy in Ubuntu and most of other distros.

[seraf]

Yeah I'm not sure what graphics I have. I know its onboard and I think its sis mirage I had to look up my motherboard a while back to find the audio driver for windows. Ubuntu does seem like it would be more new user friendly but I kind of like the way slackware sounds. It sounds like what I have been looking for in an OS something that isnt overly glittered and lets me work with in the terminal unlike windows that just does things and only god knows what the hell it is doing half the time. I like learning things like that and I like being in control of everything thats going on. It seemed like that distro would deliver what I am looking for. I got the time and patience to learn how to do it.

[devils casper]

You will definitely learn a lot using Slackware. Good Luck and let us know how it goes.

[seraf]

Yeah I'm sure I will learn a lot. Thanks for helping me I will try to keep regular on the forum though sometimes I tend to go off the radar for a while preocupied with something. I hope to someday have learned enough to be able to even help others who are new too.

[tyrannothesaurusrex]

caspers advice on dual booting is spot on. i've only done it for kicks, but it works.

if you ever decide to put windows and a nix install on the same disk the most touted method is to install linux last as windows' install procedure will write itself into the mbr, thus not giving you a choice.

what he didn't mention is that you're gonna have to figure out how lilo works, but lilo is pretty simple.

grub is too. i prefer lilo.

good luck

./tom