[issues] Re: [techtalk] Desktop OS?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Jun 04, 2001 at 09:53:53PM -0400, Caitlyn M. Martin wrote:
> OTOH, to answer your question more directly, I honestly believe the answer is 
> "yes".  Try something if you have the time.  Install either current version 
> of Windows (2000 or ME) and get it to work properly with everything in your 
> system.  Next wipe the system and do it again, this time with either 
> Linux-Mandrake 8.0 or Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 3.1 (yes, the beta is fine 
> for this test).  Tell me which is easier?  If Mandrake or Caldera correctly 
> find the hardware (and the new versions are really good at detecting hardware 
> correctly) Linux is actually easier.  No, that isn't true of all distros.  
> The two I chose are the best for newbies, IMHO.

That's almost cheating if you're attempting to install on the same system,
aiming for a dual boot.

The trouble I've had sharing hard drives with Windows... :)

Quick poll: can anyone who has ever managed to solve this situation please
mail their fdisk partition output, with discussion if you can.

I have:
3 primary partitions
hda1 is win C:
hda2 is /boot (back from lilo needing /boot to be within 1024 cylinders)
hda3 is D:
hda5- hda9 are on the extended

fdisk has:
Device		Boot	Start	End	Blocks		Id	System
/dev/hda1	*	1	262	2104483+	b	Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2		263	275	104422+		83	Linux
/dev/hda3		276	913	5124735		b	Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda4		914	1867	7663005		85	Linux extended
/dev/hda5		914	977	514048+		83	Linux
/dev/hda6		978	1239	2104483+	83	Linux
/dev/hda7		1240	1370	1052226		83	Linux
/dev/hda8		1371	1396	208813+		82	Linux swap
/dev/hda9		1397	1867	3783276		83	Linux

This all works fine now, except that Debian's lilo now follows the FAT partition
convention that only one of them can be primary and 'hides' the other. I have a
config option that turns this off, but would like to know if anyone has ever
gotten Windows to share an extended partition with Linux.

I had a terrible time with it. No matter what I did, Windows would grab the
first two GB of the extended partition and say 'mine', without paying any
attention to the logical drives. Window's fdisk labelled hda3 (which was the
extended at the time) as 'DOS extended partition'. I had to mark it 85, Linux
extended, and now Windows ignores it as 'non-DOS'.

Anyone got any better solutions - I got in a terrible IRC flamefest over
'but it's incorrect', 'but it works!', 'but it's incorrect!'

Mary.

PS Back to techtalk. People should be posting to *both* while we all resubscribe
and the DNS moves over. Not seeing DNS changes here btw.

-- 
Mary Gardiner
<mary at puzzling.org>
GPG Key ID: 77625870