SOLVED - two HDs or one? (some other questions, too)

[jbeintherockies]

Hello -

So far, I've done the following: read fred's "Consideration's before you install" (not all of the posts, however) and I've printed, bound and read the Official User Guide (OUG).

1. Is it better to have two hard drives with xp (in my case) on one and Linux Mint on the other? Or, should I just stick wth one hard drive (it's about 10 years old, 40G, 27G free) partitioned for XP and Mint? My HD is old; my mother board is new and has serial ATA connectors.

2. If I stick with one HD, I'm confused about the first partitioning scheme that fred suggested. In fred's first suggested partitioning scheme, I *think* the Linux OS would go in "/" and the existing XP OS (in my case) would go in "/home". If that is correct, would I format (can i format?) the /home to ntfs during the install? I'm confused which partition, if any, needs to be ntfs formatted if I have two OS's (in my case XP and Linux Mint) on one hardrive. Fred's post suggests formatting both "/" and "/home" ext3. The OUG suggests letting the installer resize my existing partitions when running another OS and dual booting. A friend of mine suggested the same partitioning scheme as fred. I'm confused.

3. I want to script using Perl and program with C++ and Java. How do I get the compilers for that? Do they come with the Linux Mint Isadora download? Do I need to go to a site like Ubuntu to get the compilers (and whatever else is needed) after I have installed Linux Mint?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[thenewguy]

In your case, where the old drive is a bit old, I'd go with a second hard drive.

I think you may be a bit confused about the Linux partitioning scheme. (It happens to all of us the first time.) Generally the way people set up their drives is to have three Linux partitions

/ (20GB)
swap (2GB)
/home (all remaining space)

If you also have Windows on the drive, that will generally be on the first partition, meaning your drive will be divided up more like this

Windows C: drive, which will be NTFS (however large you want it)
/ (20GB)
swap (2GB)
/home (remaining space)

So the Windows C: drive is a different partition than /home. I hope that helps a little. The / and /home partitions should be formatted as ext3 or ext4, the Windows portion will be NTFS.


I think Perl comes pre-installed with Mint 9, so you're all set there. To work with Java and C++, you'll want to install the package called "build-essentials". Best of luck and welcome to Mint!

[jbeintherockies]

Thanks newguy, that does clear up the partitioning scheme a little.

Hmmm, maybe I should get a new HD and install linux on that (dual boot). I'll start to look into going that route more.

[jbeintherockies]

i just used the liveCD. very cool. there are so many various applications! i went to the software manager and was looking at some of them. it will take me months to try all of them.


Regarding Hard Drives, anyone have any recommendations for a Linux-only HD (speed, size, make, etc)?