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installing linux on laptop

 
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Hi

iam having a laptop with p4 and 526 ram and 20 gb hdd .how can i install xp and linux as dual boot
san
 
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I have a dual boot Fedora Core 2 and Windows XP on a single HD laptop.

I first installed XP

Then I installed Fedora core from CD - choos grub as the bootloader and you should see XP as a boot target in the setup - it will probably be labelled as DOS - you can change this.

This certainly worked for FC - not sure about other distros but I am sure it is similar.
 
san ch
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hey

for the information .....one more small help can you get me any online link which explains how to go about the installation of linux after installing xp iam comfortable with xp installation

thank you
san
 
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The exact process for installing Linux depends on which distribution (or distro for short) you are using. Many distributions have a wizard that just steps you through the installation process. Also, the process depends on how much you need/want to customize the installation. Typically this involves choosing which applications to install.

Anyway, if you tell us which distro you have, we can hopefully point you in the right direction for information installation.

Layne
 
san ch
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Hey layne

Thanks for the reply iam yet to have the linux os.will try some stuff and would post if i dont get it .
thank you
san
 
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It's always best to install Windows first, then Linux, since the Windows installer will zap the Linux boot manager (LILO or GRUB).

Distros like Fedora allow you to select alternate boot partitions in their install process. In the case of a distro that's installed without dual booting, you go into /etc/grub.conf (or /etc/lilo.conf) and add the other boot sequence(s). In the case of LILO, you then have to run lilo to get the boot record updated. Grub doesn't need that extra step.

The only tricky part is that for booting Windows, you have to use a chained booting sequence, since GRUB doesn't understand Windows internals the way it does Linux and BSD.
 
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What is the least processor and least amount of memory anyone is successfully using with Linux? I have a PIII 700MHz with 320MB RAM. Just wondering how it will scale. I know that Linux itself doesn't use much memory, but KDE, Gnome etc. uses quite a lot and GUI tends to be a little slower than Windows.


thanks,

Barry
 
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Originally posted by Barry Andrews:
What is the least processor and least amount of memory anyone is successfully using with Linux? I have a PIII 700MHz with 320MB RAM. Just wondering how it will scale. I know that Linux itself doesn't use much memory, but KDE, Gnome etc. uses quite a lot and GUI tends to be a little slower than Windows.



that depends on what you mean by "successfully". until fairly recently i used a Pentium-MMX 250MHz with (i think it was) 192MB RAM, running a not that old Mandrake Linux distribution and Gnome, and it worked for me. it was slow, slow enough that i avoided running Java programs for fear of the JVM's overhead - in fact it was slow enough that i eventually spent $200 to get a faster computer - but it worked fine and got the job done.

(in fact, i once used a 486DX2-80 with 16MB RAM to run X Windows and the FVWM2 window manager, and that worked great in its day. Gnome and KDE didn't exist back then, of course, and Java was pretty much unheard of, but still.)

the PIII you describe sounds no slower than my current machine, which is an AMD Duron classed as "2200+". you've got more RAM installed than i do, however, and that should make up for the difference in CPU speed. i'm perfectly happy using Gnome, OpenOffice, and developing small Java programs; it's as snappy as i could wish for.
 
Barry Andrews
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Thanks for your input. Well... if I can't run Java then I would not consider it to be running "succesfully."

I do have Mandrake running on an AMD 2600 with 1GB RAM and it smokes. Obviously I won't get the same performance with my laptop with the specs I already mentioned.

Do you do a lot of multi-tasking? The one thing I hate about Windows is if you minimize an application it takes memory away from it so that when you go back to it, it's dead slow especially if it's a big program and it's been minimized for a while. I never have this problem with Linux. I can go back and forth between apps instantly without problems.
 
M Beck
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i do a good deal of multitasking, and since i'm an old FVWM hand i do it without minimizing anything - i usually have three, sometimes four, virtual desktops with at least one application maximized in each, and switch back and forth between them. it's rare that i notice any switchover delay. when i do, it's usually because of my web browser doing something odd. for me, minimizing an application means i don't plan on touching it at all for the next several hours or days; re-maximizing it again can indeed take a few seconds, but i think that's to be expected after so long.

Linux' virtual memory management can be a confusing, strange sort of subject, but it's not tied in to whether an application's windows are minimized or not. the kernel does try to prioritize interactive applications, but not at any cost, and the metrics used to determine which ones are "interactive" are fairly subtle.

virtual memory management and process prioritization are neverending topics of discussion among the people who write kernel-level code; the trade-offs involved almost seem more to do with politics than computer science. or at least to me they do, but i'll freely admit i'm only an interested bystander; i'm nowhere near a good enough programmer to write kernel code!
 
san ch
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Hi Beck

it is nice to see you sharing your exp with linux ......iam a beginner (though i have started late)...iam interested in learning about memory management and other os topics ,,,,,,,searched for few on the web but couldnt judge which would be good for me to start can you suggest me some links

thank you
san
 
M Beck
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if you want to learn about system-level technology in general, the best way is probably to take an OS design class at your local college or university. if that's not possible, second best is to buy a good textbook of the sort that would be used in such a class and do some self-study. some of the best known textbooks currently used in this field were authored by Andrew Tanenbaum, who certainly knows his way around an OS kernel; perhaps google for his work.

if you just want to learn about how the Linux kernel works, there's no substitute for reading the kernel developer's mailing list (linux-kernel). it's very high-traffic, so if it were me, i'd use a Usenet newsreader client to access it through a mail-to-news gateway such as gmane.

in case that's still more effort than you're willing to put in (and i wouldn't blame you!), then you can read the "condensed version" by keeping up with Kernel Traffic. that's what i try to do.
 
Tim Holloway
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Originally posted by Barry Andrews:
What is the least processor and least amount of memory anyone is successfully using with Linux? I have a PIII 700MHz with 320MB RAM. Just wondering how it will scale. I know that Linux itself doesn't use much memory, but KDE, Gnome etc. uses quite a lot and GUI tends to be a little slower than Windows.


thanks,

Barry



Server www2.mousetech.com is a P-200 (used to be a 230, but that chip fried when the fan died). 98MB RAM. The actual box is an old DFI 80486 tower unit with a mobo upgrade. This system has been running continously for about 5 years now except for the occasional hardware repair or loss of electrical power (I have about 20 minutes UPS).

This is the failover server for the mousetech.com domain, but in ordinary use, it's the alternate DNS server, file archive/backup server, MySQL server for various projects, webmail server, CVS server and gateway to the backend LAN.

Its secret to success is that it doesn't run X windows (it's a server, not a desktop) and it isn't running Java. For a J2EE server and/or IDE at a minimum, I recommend 256MB RAM and a P500. And that's a bare minimum and it doesn't matter whose OS you're running, including MS-Windows. I can launch and run Swing programs like my EJBWizard or the LBE (LDAP browser-editor) on my P200 box, but it's not a whole lot of fun to wait for them to start.

Actually, I used to do my CD burning on a P-166/48MB until I got a new CD-RW drive installed on one of the bigger boxes. The P-166 is presently being used as an "IBM mainframe". I have a special 3-inch CD I made that "IMPLs" the S/370 microcode (e.g. launches the Hercules IBM emulator) using a customized Damn Small Linux. Once that's done, I IPL OS/MVS with JES2 and TSO. The really funny thing about all that is that even under emulation, this setup is probably more powerful than the Amdahl 470/V6 I worked with back when OS/MVS 3.8 was the state of the art. And leaves about 32MB of the physical RAM unused.

When I first started playing with Linux however, I used old 486/66's. Without Gnome or KDE to load things down, 16MB of RAM was adequate to run X. These days people still run Linux on 486's, but mainly as routers or DNS servers. The real fanatics know where to find distros that run on 386's, but I won't go there.
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