I’m curious about Linux and would like to try it. I’m not ready to give up on windows yet, so I’m wondering if it’s possible to have a dual boot option for Linux and XP.
Also, would I be able to run all my win programs on Linux?
You can dual boot. It’s different for different distros, but it should be easy to find how, either in your distros docs or by googling.
You can’t run all Windows apps under Linux. Wine will run many, but not all. And Wine can be painful.
You can also use some of the Live CDs. These are complete Linux applications, OS, etc on a CD. You boot from it, WITHOUT having to partition your hard-drive or touch your existing Windows setup.
Every Linux Distro
What the others said…although I find running Linux off a disk to be a real pain.
My suggestion, given that your XP installation almost certainly takes up your whole hard drive and resizing to make room for Linux can be a pain, is to get a second hard drive to put Linux on. (It doesn’t need to be large at all - I’m typing this on a setup which is using about 3GB.) Alternatively, find one of those old Windows 98 computers that lurk in the dusty cupboards of many homes, and connect it to the internet via the XP computer. There’s two advantages to this - most Linux distros will set up a network such as this semi-automatically, whereas dealing with modems can be a pain. Secondly, if you’ve got a problem with the Linux setup that stops you getting online, you can just go to the other computer to google for solutions!
I’ve had Redhat Linux and Windows XP on my computer, dual-boot, for a while. It’s pretty easy – download the Linux ISOs and burn them to CD. Then just boot from CD and follow the installation prompts. The Linux installation will most likely install the Grub boot manager, which gives you a menu on startup to choose which OS you want to boot (you can change the default OS and the timeout time within Linux).
I recommend installing Linux on a separate hard drive if possible – that way if something goes wrong, it’s easy to reformat and try again.
Thanks guys. I do have two hard drives, but the 2nd is where I store all music, pics, movies, tv-shows ASF and it doubles as my FTP server, so I don’t want to risk mucking that up.
Based on the info here, I’ll wait till it’s time to build a new computer in a couple of months. While I’m screwing around, trying to make that work, and installing a 3rd disk, I’ll give it a shot.
That sounds like a good plan - no better time to risk screwing up Windows than when it’s in its screwed-up initial state 
When you do install it, install XP first, then linux. It can be done the other way around but it’s a royal pain in the you-know-what. Leave the drive where linux will go unformatted and unpartitioned, and let linux handle the linux partitions when you install it. Let windows do the windows stuff and let linux do the linux stuff. It’s that simple.
Also, check the linux howto for supported hardware before you go off and buy parts for your new system.
Well, I like to play with Linux, but I will continue staying with Windows for the time being.
For this reason, I prefer setting up dual-boot systems using a little piece of freeware called BootPart . When you install Linux, DO NOT install the bootloader (Grub or the other one). After the Linux install is complete, boot into XP and run Bootpart. It will scan your hard drives and add the Linux installation to your BOOT.INI file in XP and you’ll be using MS’s boot manager instead of the Linux one. This way, if you decide you don’t like Linux or want to change to another distro, you can easily get rid of the Linux install by deleting the Linux line in BOOT.INI and using Disk Management to kill the Linux partitions.
The reason I take these extra steps is because if you screw up your Linux install (or delete it the wrong way), the Linux boot manager might take a dive and you’ll have to do an XP “repair MBR” install. Of course, once you’re good with Linux you might want to use Grub, but I find that most people I council on this prefer doing it my way until they’re firmly grounded in Linux.
Oh, and Knoppix is one of those free Linux distros that boots off a CD-ROM. You don’t have to worry about it screwing up anything on your system… just download the ISO, burn it and reboot into Linux!
Sorry - the more “in-depth” answer is this:
BOOT.INI is a file that resides on the boot drive of your system. Mine looks like this after running BOOTPART:
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
C:\redhat.bin="Red Hat Linux"
C:\="Microsoft DOS"
If you decide to kill Linux, delete the Linux line so it looks like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
C:\="Microsoft DOS"
No more Linux. Also works with OS/2 and most of the BSDs, IIRC.
I knew I’d get good answers. Thanks again. I’ll bookmark this thread for future reference.
I haven’t bothered with anything like this in a few years but about 2 years ago I was still using Windows 2000 (actually still using it on one computer because I like it more than any other Windows version) and there is a program (not free) you can install that will allow you to create new logical drives out of old ones right from windows and without forcing a format. So for example if you just have one ~80 GB C:\ drive you can partition it in two without having to reinstall windows.
Not sure if the program works for XP but it’s worth looking at if you want to mess with partitioning up your HDs and have already got a bunch of stuff on them you don’t feel like moving around/backing up.