Re: Of mice and men

Pete Dashwood wrote: 

It's just too risky for me at the moment. On Friday I have a session
scheduled with a local vendor to supply hardware to my spec. I'm looking at
a notebook with 17in screen (built in video camera), P4 3+ GHz processor,
100GB HD (2 of these; one external for image copy), wireless and the works.
I'll load XP Pro on it and MAY set up a dual boot  partition with Linux.  (I
am also getting two other systems built for friends, so we should get a
reasonable deal...) Until I have that lot configured and working, and have
transferred everything from the existing machine and backed it all up to the
external hard drive on the new machine, I won't be installing anything new,
anywhere... :-)


If you install XP first, then do a simple install of Mandriva (mandrake) Linux, it wll set the machine up for dual boot automatically. The only effect you should notice in XP is the disk will get a bit smaller due to Linux setting up a couple partions. I expect that other distributions will do the same, but have no personal experience with them.

I have one system here that boots Linux, XPPro, Win98, & Win95. The only thing I use the Linux partition for is to backup the other three. Since Linux can see all three, but they cannot even see the Linbux partition, it is a bullet-proof backup method (as long as the HD keeps working<G>). It even backs up all the stuff Windows will *not* backup because of files being open, and restores them flawlessly.

Once you set up Linux, then you can use it for mail and web access, and keep the mail settings in XP as they are ... funny but installing an extra OS seems to be less risky than changing the existing system to me. I've been installing Linux on my Win systems just for backup.

Donald.
.

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