Hello,
Can someone please tell me if it is possible to install a Unix Os on a system that already has a Windows XP? If so, how do i go about it doing it?:
If your file system is NTFS you cannot install the Unix OS without formatting and re-partitioning.
If it's FAT32 you should have no problem resizing the disk.
You'll need a loader to switch between Unix and Windows, I suggest LILO.
Do a search for this topic, although personally I have never seen another question like this on the board, I'm sure this has came up before somewhere.
One need not reformat to resize one's partitions. The easiest way to go about this is to download PowerQuest's Partition Magic, and follow the instructions.
There are thousands of documents od multi-booting, just use your friendly neighborhood search engine.
I personally run Windows XP and a melded, multi-partition set up of Redhat and Slackware. The possibilities are endless!
mdoerator note: should this thread be in this category?
Mandrake asks you to make your system dual boot. It does it all for you.
I know more Linux variants have this option. Just read it's manual and you'll find out how.
Regs David
I know from personal experience that both Red Hat and SuSE versions of Linux will resize a Windows partition for you during installation. That is if you want a Linux install and not one of the other (more real) UNIX OS versions.
It can only be resized if it is FAT32.
You will not be able to resize a NTFS partition.
And running FAT32 with linux is stupid anyway, Ext 2 or 3 is so much better.
I've resised my NTFS partition no less than 5 times with partition magic.
None of the versions of RedHat that I've tried (7.1, 7.3, 8.0, 9.0) could 'resize' a partition. Yes, you can *change* the sizes, but this will effectively destroy the old partition and write a new one. All of the data will be lost.
...or Reiserfs.
My setup is something like this:
20 GB - WinXP - NTFS
5 GB - Slackware - ReiserFS
5 GB - RedHat - Ext3
10 GB - Multi-Platform Shared Files - Fat32
...not including swap and the logical/extended configuration...
Everything works smashingly - the RedHat and Slackware precompiled kernels seamlessly support Reser and Ext3, while I'm having troubles compiling some elements of my kernel in redhat, I have my NTFS partition mounted read-only via slackware, and everything can read and write to that, so I keep my music, software, etc. there.
Don't let the size of my NTFS partition fool you, though - Slackware is my primary OS; windows apps just take up so much goddamned space!