Member Avatar for senterstyle

I would like to dual boot between XP and RedHat 7.3 (I hear I shouldn't get 8 ). I already have Windows XP home installed and have games and media on the hard drive. I have Partition Magic 8, in case I have to do that. I don't think I want to use VMware, because dual booting just seems more... comfortable. Also on the website, it has two other ISO's that are SRPMS, Do I need those too? Either email me or reply!

  • 2 Contributors
  • 3 Replies
  • 119 Views
  • 12 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Dani

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

Member Avatar for Dani

Here's what I would do. Use Partition Magic to create two or more new partitions out of the free space on the current partition. One of those should be only a few megs in size, located at the head of the physical hdd, and be the boot partition. This is reserved for your boot loader such as LILO or Grub. The rest of the space should be formatted as Linux ext2/3. You'll need at least a root / partition but then you can add /home, /bin, etc etc.

Now that this is taken care of, run the RedHat installer. Map the directory structure to the current partitions you have reserved for Linux. Remember to tell the boot loader where to go! (I prefer grub to lilo).

And that should be that!

Member Avatar for Dani

Just realized you IMed me asking how big the partitions should be. The boot loader partition should only be a few megs. 5mb is very, very generous. You might want to do a google search to see how big each partition should be if you want to create separate partitions for separate directories. However, how much you reserve for linux all depends on how big your hard drive is, how much you want to keep for windows, and whether you're going to be installing a lot of linux software or saving a lot of files. Generally, a typical full linux install of one of the latest versions of RedHat can range anywhere from 500 mb to 2 gigs with mostly all software installed. If you can afford to, I would give linux at least 5 to 10 gigs, with room to expand.

Member Avatar for Dani

Sorry, I forgot to mention you need another swap partition for linux. Set this partition to double the amount of ram you have, if you can.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.