Keith Devens .com

Well, I've tried a dual windows/linux boot setup on onde hard drive a year ago or so.
I ended up with a not working windows system, so at least it is very sensible to backup your data, I think (which I had done only partially).
Nowadays, I have a dual boot system with each operating system on it's own hard drive. This works just fine.
So guess what I would recommend...

As for a Linux distribution to try, I'd recommend Mandrake Linux. It's very user-friendly, handles integration with Windows well, and has handy configuration tools to help you if you're are still learning your away around Linux.

Don't forget to install Windows first or it will overwrite the boot sector rendering Linux unbootable. Mandrake will take care of both Windows and the boot sector after the install.

I lived with 10GB for each system for a time (now it's 20GB for Windows, and 60GB for Linux) and it works unless you're going to install lots of games in the Windows partition.

Don't trust partition tools. In my experience, they don't work well unless the partition you will resize is not fragmented and has its allocation tables near its beginning.

The filesystem can be ext3 or Reiser. I used both in various settings, and both worked nicely.

If you're going to install Linux and you have any intention whatsoever of installing software other than what comes on the CD, I highly recommend installing some flavor of Debian. The huge advantage that Debian has over other distros is that to install... say Audacity you just open either Synaptic (if you want a GUI) or the command line and type:
apt-get install audacity
Wait a minute and you're done. On Mandrake, Fedora, SuSE or anything except Gentoo (which is a whole different story) you basically have to hope the version on the CD is current (if it's there at all) or that someone has packaged it and put it online. That's less than half of the battle though--you've still got to settle all the dependencies of the program. It can become a nightmare.

Debian does all that for you. Some debian based distros are Lycoris, Linspire (previously Lindows), Knoppix and my personal favorite, Mepis. Another great thing about Mepis and Knoppix is that you can run them off the CD without touching your hard drive before you install them to make sure everything works--you get the full operating system booted in about 2 minutes.

I've written a bit about Mepis recently on marcusvorwaller.com or check out their site at mepis.org.

Best luck.

If you're going to install Linux and you have any intention whatsoever of installing software other than what comes on the CD, I highly recommend installing some flavor of Debian. The huge advantage that Debian has over other distros is that to install... say Audacity you just open either Synaptic (if you want a GUI) or the command line and type:
apt-get install audacity
Wait a minute and you're done. On Mandrake, Fedora, SuSE or anything except Gentoo (which is a whole different story) you basically have to hope the version on the CD is current (if it's there at all) or that someone has packaged it and put it online. That's less than half of the battle though--you've still got to settle all the dependencies of the program. It can become a nightmare.

Debian does all that for you. Some debian based distros are Lycoris, Linspire (previously Lindows), Knoppix and my personal favorite, Mepis. Another great thing about Mepis and Knoppix is that you can run them off the CD without touching your hard drive before you install them to make sure everything works--you get the full operating system booted in about 2 minutes.

I've written a bit about Mepis recently on marcusvorwaller.com or check out their site at mepis.org.

Best luck.
(sorry if this posted twice)

There is a tool called PSNUP which should let you print multiple pages to a sheet.

I would imagine that its possible to set it up as a filter in the print server, but this isn't something I've had the inclination to try so I can't speak from experience.

As for distros...

Fedora might do the trick, but it drove me batty over the weekend (and I class myself as a power user). That could be a consequence of installing it on very old hardware though.

Debian doesn't have a pretty installer, but it is very easy to maintain (Fedora had be sitting at the keyboard for hours, Debian needed 15 minutes of option selecting). It does lag behind other distros though.

SuSE was my first distro, and it is supposed to be very good now - however its not exactly easy to get it installed without paying for it.

Mandrake served me well for quite some time before I moved on to something more advanced and is probably the best choice for a newbie.

You might also look at a distro that runs from CD, such as Konppix, at least at the start. Knoppix is based on Debian and has an installer script - so if you like it, you can copy it to your hard disk, and then switch to Debian apt servers for upgrades.

I've used Knoppix before, and it's pretty good. I want something installed on my machine that I don't have to boot from CD. I'm almost certainly going to use Mandrake, as you recommended. It seems to have a very easy installer that will resize my NTFS partition for me, it has ReiserFS built in, and it seems like a nice distro. After that, I'll have a Linux partition set up if I desire to move to another distro later (but that's getting ahead of myself).

Thanks to all for all the advice.

I am trying to get my PC to dual boot with Linux and Windows.
My PC :
2 HDDs...Primary /dev/hda
Secondary /dev/hdc
Secondary has WinXP (Which wouldnt boot with GRUB)
Primary has FedoraCore4.
It seems GRUB cannot get XP to boot. I first installed XP then installed FC4 and it could detect XP but I cant boot XP.
Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rajat.

http://keithdevens.com/weblog/archive/2005/Jun/25/Install-Windows-after-Linux
http://keithdevens.com/weblog/archive/2005/Apr/10/Ubuntu.install