[Novalug] Insalling partition for other O/S after installingWindoze XP

[O'Hearn, Tim]

JMDarlack at Yahoo.com wrote:
>The questions are, can I install Linux to run in it
>now, after XP was installed??
>
>Can I run Linux from the second hard drive, which is
>more for data storage?
>
>Can I install Linux and expect that XP will not be
>effected?  There isnt that much on my XP, however, I
>dont want to re-install it all unless I have to.
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
_____

     Now is the time to install Linux, after Windows.  Otherwise Windows
messes up the boot record.
     You can install the Linux distro you choose on a partition on
either hard drive. At home, I have it on the same hard drive as the
Windows partition, (my wife uses Windows) and at the office Linux is on
a second hard drive in my machine.
     XP will not be affected.  There is no reason it should need to be
re-installed.  
     Before you install your Linux distro, defrag your Windows drives.
Then when the distro wants to partition your drive for installation you
leave XP with a large enough space for anything you want to add in the
future and use some of the rest for the Linux distro.  
     I've used about 20 GB for Fedora for an ext3 filesystem for the
distribution and then have my data drive formatted as vfat so that Linux
and Windows can share the files on it.