Dualboot XP & Linux, newbie help.

M

mrelwood

New member
I have used a dual boot XP & XP-audio, but even the XP audio keeps giving me hard time. I have familiarized myself with XP quite well. I'd like to try the idea of a Linux for audio work, but I don't know the slightest thing about Linux, so I need the newbiest of the noob kind of help.

Can I install a Linux on my PC?
-AMD Athlon XP64 3000+
-Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939
-ATI Radeon 7000 (Connect3D)

Can I make a dual boot for XP & Linux?

Do the Linux audio softwares use formats familiar with Windows?

How do I choose from Fedora, RedHat, Debian, Mandrake and whatever?

Do I ever get familiar with all the terms, Jack, Alsa, tar, gz, dyne:bolic, Agnula, Kernel, apt-get...? Phew!

Is this a stoopid idea overall?


-Aki.
 
mrelwood said:
I have used a dual boot XP & XP-audio, but even the XP audio keeps giving me hard time. I have familiarized myself with XP quite well. I'd like to try the idea of a Linux for audio work, but I don't know the slightest thing about Linux, so I need the newbiest of the noob kind of help.

Can I install a Linux on my PC?
-AMD Athlon XP64 3000+
-Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939
-ATI Radeon 7000 (Connect3D)

Can I make a dual boot for XP & Linux?

Do the Linux audio softwares use formats familiar with Windows?

How do I choose from Fedora, RedHat, Debian, Mandrake and whatever?

Do I ever get familiar with all the terms, Jack, Alsa, tar, gz, dyne:bolic, Agnula, Kernel, apt-get...? Phew!

Is this a stoopid idea overall?


-Aki.
Click to expand...


Yeah, your pc can handle linux. Just make sure you download files that support the 64. (And whether or not your soundcard will be supported easily is another thing though.)

Yes, you will be able to dual boot, as long as you have an available partition (or two.)

Yes, you will get familiar with the terms, especially if you won't mind sitting and fooling around for a few hours. I spent a lot of time over the past year with linux. I learned a lot by myself, but it was a long process. I started otu with FC3 and ended with Ubuntu (with about 6 different distributions in between.) Granted, I never use linux anymore unless I'm bored, but it was still fun taking the time to learn.

No, I wouldn't say your idea is stupid. I personally had a hard time trying to get things installed on linux (like CCRMA), so that's mostly the reason why I gave up on the idea of using it for recording. YMMV << always wanted to use that acronym :D
 
Dual boot is possible, but do search around on the particulars before you start. But first you have to decide on a distro, as the procedure may vary.

Linux knows almost all audio file formats used in windows and some more as well. So that won't be the problem. But specific formats like session file from popular audio apps are very likely not supported.

Best to base your choice on what you can get as support the closest near you. So if you know some people around that may help you, check there first. Otherwise a special audio distro like CCRMA or Agnula if you really want to do audio. Also check if your hardware is supported.

It will take some time to adjust. But in the end you will have to learn it.

Stupid it isn't. But are you sure? It won't be easy, it will take time and can be frustrating as well.
 
Dual booting is pretty easy actually.

Make sure you install XP first and you'll be fine.
There is a 64bit version of Fedora around - that should do fine unless you are trying to install directly onto a SATA hard drive.

If you want to do this, or want to learn lots about Linux I would recommend Gentoo Linux. Gentoo forces you to go though a step-by-step setup routine where you install each part of Linux seperatly and go through all the config files. You will get stuck several times - but there is great support at the Gentoo forums.

Have fun :)

BTW - to get a flavour of Linux, try this 'Live CD' version.
You don't have to put anything on your hard drive so there's no setup and nothing to lose!
http://www.dynebolic.org/
 
If you want to do this, or want to learn lots about Linux I would recommend Gentoo Linux
Click to expand...

The single most important thing you learn instaling Gentoo is RTFM. You only learn linux by using it and finding your way in it. It takes time just like learning anything else. It's forums are very nice, but not very audio minded in the sense audio is used on this forum.
 
mrelwood said:
Can I make a dual boot for XP & Linux?

Do the Linux audio softwares use formats familiar with Windows?

How do I choose from Fedora, RedHat, Debian, Mandrake and whatever?

Do I ever get familiar with all the terms, Jack, Alsa, tar, gz, dyne:bolic, Agnula, Kernel, apt-get...? Phew!

Is this a stoopid idea overall?


-Aki.
Click to expand...

1. Yes you can dual boot linux on your computer.

2a (audio formats). Linux can understand STANDARD audio formats (wav, aiff, mp3, cda, raw, MIDI, etc) quite well. If you have projects in proprietary formats (Cakewalk bundle files, wma, ram), you'll need to save them in a standard format to transfer over.

2b (file system formats). NTFS (winNT, win2000, winXp's preferred filesystem) access is read only. Write access is being reverse engineered, but MS isn't exactly forthcoming with their filesystem specs. Fat32 (Win9x, winME) access is read/write. You'll want to make sure you have a fat32 partition available if you plan to dual boot. I keep my music drives as fat32, and use native XP and linux formats on my OS drive.

3. For a linux newbie, PlanetCCRMA and Demudi are really the very best choices. I've tried both, and found that PlanetCCRMA is the better choice for me. Fernando's done an excellent job in making the system easy to install, and his install documentation is head and shoulders above the rest. Plus he spends a lot of time making sure the individual softare packages install and run trouble free. I'm currently running PlanetCCRMA/Fedora core 2. (NOTE: Fedora Core 2 has a "quirk" in the installer. If you decide to go with FC2, make SURE your BIOS specifies LBA disk access for your hard drive. You'll avoid a lot of hassle that way. If you're not comfortable changing BIOS settings, go with FC1)

4. It's part of the learning curve, and as far as jack (and other software) goes, there's GUI tools to set everything :) You won't have to use the command line unless you want to.

5. Hell no it's not a stupid idea! Just keep in mind that linux isn't hard, it's just different. There's some excellent audio tools under linux, and once you learn your way around, you'll have a blast.
 
Are you sure you can install linux after xp? I'm pretty sure my school was having trouble installing linux after xp was already on the computers.
 
I'd rather instal CYGWIN which is a native Linux environment for Win XP.

With Cygwin you can execute any Linux program/command within Windows. Works like a charm, is easy to install and doesn't require too much disk space (around 300MB for a full installation, but you can customize it). I had dual-boot desktops/notebooks for the last 10 years or so, but now I change to CYGWIN coz its so much easier to use.
 
Just remember - CYGWIN is *not* Linux. Although it does have it's uses and generally works very well, it's an emulation layer on top of Windows. I don't recommend it to anyone who needs or wants a true Linux system.

As for dual boot, it's pretty much a no-brainer these days. Yes, install XP first. Any Linux distro worth bothering with will detect the XP installation and handle it correctly. Let the "grub" boot loader do the work.

Having said that, be sure to make a rescue floppy or have a Windows rescue CD handy. I ran into a situation just last week where I could not boot into Windows because of a misaligned partition -- which I'm pretty sure was my fault to begin with. If you're paranoid, leave the Windows boot loader in place (with the compromise that you have to get thru two loaders to get to Linux).

Other than that, don't worry. Have fun. ;)
 
fldrummer said:
Are you sure you can install linux after xp? I'm pretty sure my school was having trouble installing linux after xp was already on the computers.
Click to expand...

It can be a pain if you have to use fdisk to make partitions after installing XP.

I highly recommend downloading and burning this:
http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

It has a great partitioning tool - it does pretty much everything partition magic does, but it's free.
 
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