Rebuilding PC and want linux

[newuser9]

I would like to rebuild/upgrade a PC which currently has windows 95. I would like to install linux and i don't know much of anything about what i'm getting into.

First thought, get a new hard drive and start from there.
If so will this be an ugly can of worms?

Second thought, keep the existing hard drive and see if these two OS's can reside together on the same the same machine. (which DEFINITELY sounds like a can of worms to me!)

If you can help , THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!!

 

[fluid11]

Dual booting Windows and Linux is pretty straight forward to set up.

First, completely wipe out your machine by deleting all of your partitions with fdisk and also do a "fdisk /mbr" to clean the MBR.

Install Windows first. Make sure to leave enough disk space on your hard drive for Linux.

Get yourself a copy of Linux (any distrobution will do, but I prefer Red Hat). Start the Linux installation by booting from the CD. During the installation, when you get to the part about installing a bootloader, select either GRUB or LILO (doesn't matter which) and tell it to install into the MBR. This will overwrite anything that Windows has done there, so you will now use GRUB or LILO to boot both Linux and Windows. Red Hat usually does a good job of auto-detecting any other installed OS's, so you probably shouldn't have to make any changes to boot to Windows from your bootloader. Just finish the installation and that *should* be it.



ChrisP

 

[jstreich]

both are easy to do, without losing any information. YOU DON'T HAVE TO WIPE THE SYSTEM CLEAN.... If running on a single drive run FIPS to non-destructivly partition the drive. This will exsactly half your windows partition. (to run, restart in DOS mode, and run FIPS (included on most Linux disks).... The system will count percents and then restart as usual. You'll then re-start the system with the Linux boot disk in and install LILO to the Master Boot record. LILO will see the win 95 (DOS) partition and add a menu on start-up for which half you'd like to boot. There are some newer tools that do the same thing as LILO, but LILO is time tested.

Installing a second hardrive is not a bigdeal... Just makesure that Windows is the master and the new hardrive is Linux and install LILO to the first sector of the Master Boot Record for the primary drive. Remeber to mark both drives bootable, and your off and running.