Linux and XP

[ntwrkscrty]

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

[The Grunt]

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.

[ntwrkscrty]

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

[mischievous]

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.

[foxyloxley]

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

[House929]

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.

[The Grunt]

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.

[House929]

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.

[gore]

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.

[The Grunt]

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.