Linux and XP

MS has been giving us the mainstream for so long that it is hard to go away from it. I am starting on my journey to give Linux a try. (SAFETY NET:) I just don't want to go totally away all my windows xp stuff.
I researched a little about dual booting and partitioning and so on, and i am trying to attack each hill as I approach it, so to speak.

What I haven't been able to anywhere is information on downloading Linux and installing it (if possible, and this may be why I can't find the info) from my hard drive.....see RadioShack fixed my battery and broke my dvd burner, so i can't follow a lot of these tutorials instructions to burn them to a cd.....

so my question is: can you dl and install linux from the HDD (note: I have XP currently installed, as i indicated earlier, I am trying to run 2 OSs on one box)? and I appreciate the hlep I get.....eric

Basically, you can't... It's possible, but very difficult. Download linux on someone else's computer and burn it. That's probably your best option.

figures, nothing can be easy for me.....thanks....eric

It's possible with some distros, usually by booting from a couple of floppies and then pointing at the hard drive for the other files. The instructions will vary from distro to distro though.

send off for your FREE Ubuntu discs here

there are a lot of people here who have done so, and it takes a few weeks, but you do need to read up a bit :)

Give me one sec. If you just want to play with linux there are distros that are believe it or not small enough to fit on a floppies. I kid you not. It's going to take a second for me to find the ones I am thinking about it has years since I have looked for them.

Also if you don't want to fully switch over at one time get yourself a usb cd drive and just burn it on that. If I remember correctly they don't cost much and will alleviate you not having a drive.

http://users.sunet.com.au/~tsn/floppy_linux.html

Would be the best place for you to look at.

Trying to learn on a distro that fits on a floppy is ridiculous. It wouldn't have X, which means you'd have to do EVERYTHING from a LIMITED command line. Not worth it. Ubuntu or a friends cd burner definitly sounds best to me.

Grunt, not to completely disagree with you. But... I am absolutely sure that you are wrong. Sorry, but to learn on a command line only is not hard. Takes a bit more time but you learn. You learn a lot better. You are more likely to learn wtf is actually going on. There are far too many lin/un users that have absolutely no idea what is going on because they are running X. All the more reason why I like CLI I prefer a bit of the time to run it by itself. Now if you would of said something like running slackware which requires you to start X.

Please be more helpful less arguementative.

Good Lord I'm about to agree with Whiz..... Grunt if you use Unix or ANY type and can't work in a shell you're never going to do much of anything with it. Saying the shell isn't as good as a GUI.... Man lol, I'm gonna smack you. Limited... Lol, GUI = Limited.

And as for installing from a HD, either Free BSD, or Slackware Linux, check both, have docs for doing just that.

I'm not saying the CLI isn't useful, I'm saying without a gui handed to you it's a lot harder to learn. CLI is without a doubt something you have to learn for any *nix. It's a lot easier to start using linux when your internet works, it takes 5 minutes to figure out how to get mp3's playing, and you can get on GAIM.

Naim works without X. Hehe. I'm just glad you waited to reply, Ghost Hunters was on :)

Just to get a little back to the point......because even though i am prior navy, all those acronyms are just confusing (and besides, I'm new!)

My original question was about whether I could just forgo using a live cd (knoppix) and put the os on the hard drive (and it would be resident with XP) and it being able to work.....question answered:
by grunt (thanks), it's too difficult (especially to a new user), so i am not going to try.
Soooooo...
without a cd burner, and with grunt's answer, i am relegated to waiting til i buy a new ext cd burner or a friend to mail the cds to me, whichever comes first.

now, since i have been reading the AO *nix tutorials all morning, i have a couple new questions.....here goes:

background and q:

With XP humming along and doing all the things that make it great. Say i want to create words docs, excel spreadsheets, ppt presentations, and just all kinds of stuff and saving all this stuff as i go along (obviously to the hard drive). it is saved what i am assuming is to an NTFS file system (and i haven't done a lot of research on file systems). Now I boot from my knoppix live cd and am cruising along and my sys is doing all it's supposed to do and same situation: i want to create docs and spreadsheets and all kinds of data to be saved. where does this data get saved (because if i've read correctly, knoppix and ntfs are not friends). So, if all the above is correct, then am i supposed to partition or petition or go in with a reciprocating saw and cut out some hard drive space for unix or what????

next: the windows registry is something i've been reading up a lot on lately and it is supposed to be the "neuronetwork" of windows containing all this magic and fairy bytes making it work, blah blah blah......does *nix have something like this or is that what makes the FUNDAMENTAL difference between the two OSs and I have just asked a supremely dumb question? thanks....eric

heh... In windows you are forced to use the registry because the system thinks you are too stupid to effect the kernel. In linux... you own the kernel so you change wtf ever you want.

To your first question, are you running fat32 or ntfs? You can run both on XP. Though there are more limits with fat32 on XP than NTFS. I personally can't answer you question about knoppix treating ntfs like a retarded step child. I am running Fat32.

But, the most simplistic thing would be to save the files to a floppy then transfer. But from what I remember from dyne it creates another partition.

edit:

btw grunt I want you to show me one thing you can do on a GUI that I can't do on a CLI. Well other than playing some video games.

OP, CLI Command Line Interface, GUI Graphical User Interface

GAIM is pretty much xchat, aim, yim and several other instant messengers rolled in one.

X is X windows system. It is pretty much like explorer just with more options on what kind of environment your going to be in. If you do play with linux and install it. Play around with which windowing system you use. There are hundreds and people become as close to their windowing system as they do to their text editor. (You will understand the text editor thing later on.)

Quote:

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btw grunt I want you to show me one thing you can do on a GUI that I can't do on a CLI. Well other than playing some video games.

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Learning the basics of how to use it coming from a windows enviroment.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by The Grunt
Learning the basics of how to use it coming from a windows enviroment.

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Windows 98 SE on back:

Start > Shutdown > MS-DOS

What was that agian ;) ?

Not to mention the RAM and resources you aren't wasting to look pretty.

He's on XP ;)

What was that again?

If he's already running XP, he's got PLENTY of RAM to spare.

OK Mr I think I know metal, so tell me how to use a GUI for net send and ping ;)

On a side note my Mom just bought me the Johnny Cash movie and it was a double package which has his movie on Gospel Road too ;)

You write a new program, duh. Only way to do it.

Right now I'm listening to Dream Theater, was listening to lamb of god, opeth, and nevermore earlier. I do know metal.

Walk the Line was good, but I think they could of chose a better actor. Just me personally...

actually gore sam spade I believe lets you do ping... And there are plenty of programs that let you net send.

It seems this thread has detered far from where it originally was.

But, if you want to watch a movie make it crash. Really good movie... as for music T-pain or John Legend... If you want great music put in the beatles greatest hits.

yeah, youz guyz with your off topic banter.......anyways, i was about as frustrated as all hell earlier. Not only is my wife deciding NOT to put out, but apparently her computer wouldn't put out either. If you didn't know already, my cd burner is on the fritz (thanks RadioShack), and I was having difficulty burning a copy of knoppix to cd. well, i had her bring home her work laptop (with a burner, but without a good burning prog on it) so i could burn this OS before I go KA-razy in here. Well, right off the bat, she doesn't get admin privys on her laptop, so i had to try several different burning progs before i found a few that would install without admin rights, and then.......IT'S....IT'S.....ALIVE!!!!!

So, now i am cruising along with my linux OS and didn't really do a whole lot yet, cause i amnot ready to "customize" everything, but if there are any pointers before i start tomorrow morning, let me know.....

and another thing, like i was asking earlier, do i need to do any kind of HDD maint (like partitioning and starting a new file system or WTF??? I am really lost when it comes to file systems, they're prob not that complicated, i am just making rocket science out of it.) IOT save files from programs that i run under linux? i have an NTFS file system for XP, and i didn't think that linux liked ntfs.

MY GOD, i am just so happy to be out from underneath that whole fiasco (which is the part nobody but me and my 3yr old girl saw) of not being able to DO anything without access to a CD-R drive!!!!!!!! thanks.....eric

also grunt and gore: i am running xp and have over 1GB Ram, so i am good there.....and learning the basics of CLI is hard coming from the catholic way of life windows presents. and crash (the movie) is okay, i could really only watch it once and the Johnny Cash movie seems okay, i just don't really get into movies like that. See Boondock Saints, great flick!!!

Boondock Saints is the ****.

Glad you got something worked out with linux man.

i don't know what's protocol, but rather than start a new thread, i have just continued the old one i started, since it's same topic, just different questions......

anyhow, i've looked around and it appears that i can only BUY the knoppix DVD. All the mirrors i've seen only have the cd. anybody know where the DVD for knoppix is??

PS.......HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY........EVERYBODY'S IRISH TODAY!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix-dvd/

4.0 is the newest version on there, don't know if that's the newest version available, but frankly, doesn't really matter on version unless you get something REALLY old.