Running Linux and Vista on my new comp

[sillyfrenchman]

Yay I finally upgraded, but I don't know what to do. 8)

It ships with Vista, but I want to try Ubuntu or Fedora. I want to use Ubuntu and Fedora to browse internet, do my work (on OpenOffice of course), etc.

Games will be on Vista... and that's about it.

What are my options? I've never done this before so be gentle please. If you suggest something like dual booting, where is a good guide for me to learn?

Thank you very much.

 

[Zoron]

Best option is to add another hard drive and use it to install whichever distro you decide upon (I personally have Fedora 7). You can configure GRUB to allow you to boot to either Windows or Linux by default.

 

[sillyfrenchman]

What is the downside to partitioning the harddrive with a program?

 

[linux_0]

You can use gparted to shrink your vista partition to make room for the Linux partition.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Make sure you have a backup and a way to re-install if something goes wrong.

GL :-D

 

[Zoron]

The only real downside is that if that one drive fails, you have to reinstall everything on both OSes. Of course, if you have a back-up image available, it's not a big deal. When running multiple OSes, I prefer dedicating one hard drive to that particular OS.