Partitioning question about upcoming Mint/XP dual boot

[rlindsey0]

Hi, I'm a newbie, but I've been playing around with various distros on live CD and have decided that I want to dual-boot Mint on this new XP Pro laptop I got (Asus Z84J, 2 GB, T7200 2 GHz processor, 200 GB 7200 RPM, Intel 4965agn wireless, NVidia Go 7700). The main reason I'm keeping XP is that I'm a musician, and the recording program I prefer is not available on Linux. Most of the other stuff I do is just office and Web, and Mozilla and OO on Mint ought to work well enough for that, I'd think. I haven't done the Mint install yet, but I will shortly, and I wanted to try and resolve a couple of questions before I do.

So, to the questions.

1. In playing around with Compiz on the various distros, I find I love the eye candy. Call me shallow, but there it is. Yet there seem to be some posts in which Compiz doesn't play nice with NVidia. Is there some way I can have Compiz, or something equivalent, and yet not have trouble with my NVidia card? Is it a matter of just using generic drivers and not using Envy to install the proprietary NVidia drivers? Or will I be OK either way?

2. Although I'm keeping Windows for audio recording for now, in the future I may be interested in exploring Linux audio, perhaps with something like Ubuntu Studio. But I don't want to do this right now. Is there any percentage in reserving some space and partitions for an audio distro right now, when I do the Mint install (is that even possible?)? Would that make subsequent addition of an audio distro easier? Or is it, rather, more sensible just to cross that bridge when I come to it? That is, does it make more sense just to wait until I know for sure whether I want to try Linux audio, and then repartition at that time?

I ask because the idea of repartitioning still freaks me out a little, and I'm trying to avoid as much trouble as I can.

[Edited subject line because I do in fact know how to spell "partitioning."]

Thanks for any help.

[Husse]

There is no special problems with nvidia and compiz - but there are problems with compiz Mind you it's still a beta, not fully developed (but better than the Vista equivalent - Aeroglass?)
So when you've installed the first thing is to install better video drivers. That's best done with Envy.
After that you can turn on Compiz (the visual effects tab in Appearances)
In the main gnome edition there's no configuration as the tool for that (ccsm Compiz config manager)
makes logging out and back in hard to impossible, but for one user it's OK
As for partitioning you have a pretty large disk.
Reserve 1 GB for swap (you can't use more) and about 8 GB for root (and make an extra 8GB partition for upcoming use when you're at it). Then in your case perhaps a /home partition of some 20 GB and the rest of the disk to share between Linux and XP. Mint has a good support for NTFS And format the Linux partitions as ext3 (except the swap )
A separate /home partition makes reinstalling really easy - most of your settings for programs are preserved. I've reinstalled and had every program (almost) back as I want them in less than two hours
I see another answer has arrived before I was ready - only one comment to it - don't use fat32, waist of space as clusters get really big in big partitions

[rlindsey0]

Thanks to both of you for the prompt and helpful advice.

FWIW, I'll be doing the bulk of my music recording to an external HDD (eSATA if I can, USB or FW if I can't). So I won't be too worried about leaving space on the primary drive for audio files (which can build up quickly, as you know).

If I may presume a little further: stevenofnine, you mentioned leaving three extra partitions for three more Linux distros. Do you only need one other partition for each new distro? This suggests that new distros can share the swap file, and maybe the /home partition too? Is that correct or have I misunderstood?

Thanks.

[McLovin]

Also to further the answer on audio tools, you can install all the UbuntuStudio apps in Mint, you do not need to install another OS to get them, they are readily available in the repos. So don't worry about setting aside space for another os just to get the UbuntuStudio apps.

[Fred]

muskratmx wrote:

As for /home each distro must have it's unique user. Such as steve, mcsteve, and stevemc. So that they don't sqaush each others config files. With six distros installed, I have six users in my /home.

This is an important point to remember. Don't try to use the same user name or you will most certainly have a mess if attempting to share /home.

Fred

[rlindsey0]

You guys rock. IME with forums, it's not common to get this much good, well-focused help so promptly.

I think I'm going to like it in Minty Land....

[rlindsey0]

Also to further the answer on audio tools, you can install all the UbuntuStudio apps in Mint, you do not need to install another OS to get them, they are readily available in the repos. So don't worry about setting aside space for another os just to get the UbuntuStudio apps.

[Guinness commercial] Brilliant! [/Guinness commercial]

My only thought about that is, is there a kernel issue involved? I seem to remember that Ubuntu Studio uses a special low-latency or real-time kernel. This is desirable for music, of course, because latency is the bugbear of all computer recording. But I've heard that messing with the kernel can cause problems. I'm wondering--if I install the Ubuntu Studio apps with the low-latency kernel, is that going to hose my Mint install?

[rlindsey0]

As far as I know, Ubuntu Studio does use a different kernel:

http://ubuntustudio.org/files/ubuntustu ... tes_en.txt

Other audio-focused distributions may as well. I seem to recall hearing that 64Studio and JAD do, but I'm no expert.

I'm confused on how you could have two different kernels for the same distro and choose which one to boot from....?

[Fred]

Greetings,

Interesting question about the kernels. On the one hand it would be just about as easy to have two distros each with a different kernel, as it would be to use two kernels with the same distro. You would have to reboot the distro to select the other kernel anyway.

On the other hand, What would be the problem with running the preemptable kernel all the time in one distro. After all this is a desktop distro. I can't see right off hand why a preemptable kernel would be a problem on programs that didn't need it.

Fred

[Fred]

rlindsey0,

Sorry, forgot to answer your question.

You would select the kernel to boot from the grub screen. Both kernels would be in /boot and you would have another entry on your grub screen to run the preemptable kernel.

Fred

[McLovin]

UbuntuStudio does indeed have it's own kernel, however, you do not have to run the kernel to use the apps, they work just fine in the standard kernel, (I currently have them installed, though I did not install the kernel, and I use the studio apps for music mixing and DJing). This way you can install the kernel, or not, your choice, and still have all the apps from UbuntuStudio, though if you are doing live recording, yes the low latency kernel would be a good idea.

[rlindsey0]

Thanks again, folks. I am happy to say that I got the Mint install done, and I am now typing this from within Mint--where I plan to spend as much of my computer time as I can. I'll be using Mackie Tracktion in Windows as my music program for the foreseeable future, but for Web browsing and office stuff, I don't at present see any need to go outside Mint. We'll see how things go.

Again, I appreciate the help.

[Husse]

I'm not quite sure if the kernel is different, but quite a bit of the modules that are loaded into it are....
(modprobe )