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Dual-Booting Linux And Windows
By: Bryan Young
Expert Author
2010-07-21
The vast majority of computer users are more than happy using one operating system for everything they do. I had hoped, when I was but a lad, that I would fall into that category, but I found out that this just wouldn't be the case.
I grew up with Windows, so when I needed a computer for college, I naturally got a Windows machine. After associating with my computer science peers, and seeing their linux based lives, I found that for developing a vast array of programs, I needed to make a switch. I wasn't ready to make a complete conversion though, mostly because I still had many assignments which required Microsoft Visual Studio. The only solution I could think of was to dual boot.
First things first - it is much easier to set up a dual-boot if windows is installed first. It's possible to do it in reverse, but I do not recommend it. The reasoning has to do with the Windows installer being very picky and not cohesive to sharing a hard drive. Once you've downloaded the Linux distribution you want to install and burned it to a disk, you are ready to get started.
1.Insert the Live CD into your computer and reboot. You may need to enter BIOS setup and tell your computer to boot from the CD drive before the Hard Disk, or there is usually a menu that will come up with a certain keypress.
2.Select Install from the menu. This varies with the different distributions, but is fairly self explanatory.
3.Go through the installation until you come to the partition editor. You will now be able to decide how much hard drive space will be used by each operating system. 50/50 is always a good choice, especially considering the size of most hard drives these days.
4.Depending on the size of your drive, this could take a while, but once it finishes, you're pretty much done. All that's left is to finish the installation and setup your new dual booted system.
About the Author:
Bryan Young is a staff writer for WebProNews.
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