Tomorrow I will be installing Windows 7 on my newly built machine. I'm curious about linux/linux variant and wondering if I should try and set up a dual boot with it just to screw around with it and see what the hype is all about. I have no real reason other than this. Windows would still be my primary OS.

I have a 1TB, 400GB, an 80GB hard drive at my disposal and only about 200GB of backed up data, so most of the space is unspoken for. If I try to do this, how should I arrange and setup my storage space and install the operating systems?

I recommend trying Wubi. It's an installer for Ubuntu that puts the entire OS in one directory without partitioning or formatting, and still lets you dual-boot. If you want to get rid of it you just uninstall it like any other program.

Say I install both OSs on my TB HD, will all files I ever put on that HD be shared and accessed across both operating systems?

Side question, when I have multiple hard drive like I do, does it matter how I install my operating systems? Is it better to install them on the smaller one, then use the larger one for everything else? Or should the OS be on the same drive as everything else?

It depends on which filesystem you use for Linux. Linux can read and write NTFS filesystems like Windows uses. There's an ext2 driver for Windows that you can use to read/write ext2, ext3 and to some extent ext4 filesystems. However it's probably just easier to have a common drive for both operating systems using NTFS, as the support in Linux for NTFS is probably better than ext3/4 in Windows (you don't want to use ext2, it's too old and not as robust).


This is kind of a matter of opinion. With Linux, you can set up partitions any way you want. It's common for people to have the /home folder (which has all user data) on a separate partition to make upgrades or restorations easier. I don't think you really need to worry about that, though.

For Windows, I have a 75GB partition for the OS and commonly used programs. I put my other data and games on separate drives or partitions. This makes upgrades or restorations easier, as all I need to do is reinstall common applications. I find that heavyweight applications like Photoshop need to be reinstalled anyway, as they have authentication or anti-piracy services that need to run. If they are missing necessary information from installation they won't run. Games on the other hand are usually pretty simple and work well, especially if buy most of them on Steam, which is why my games are on a separate drive. If I need to reinstall Windows, I just reinstall Steam in the same location and all my games work.

Run it in a VM first and see if you like it

Yeah, I use virtualbox for all of my linux needs. There's really no point or benefit to doing a full install. And if your system isn't totally bog standard, the Linux kernel's god awful ACPI/thermal management is like playing russian roulette.

This.

When I actually need to use Linux (not all that often), I just load up (or build) a VMWare VM on my i7 desktop and it runs faster than I even really need it to. I haven't used a native Linux installation in many years.

VirtualBox. I would also recommend getting a decent CompTIA Linux+ study guide (I like the Sybex series).

I dual-boot Win7 and mint, and it's almost the same thing.

You'll have to read a forum a few times to know what you're doing. It's always worth the experience.

Sure, it's good times.
VMware player is the VM I use, simply due to USB.

VirtualBox & VMWare are both fine, but they have bugs that can cause issues so don't blame Linux if you run into problems like crashes every so often.

They also may not provide the best user experience... 3D acceleration can be hit or miss, which is disruptive if you want to try out the fancy composited UI or play funny games like Tux Racer. That's why I suggested Wubi. A one click installer that won't disrupt the rest of his system and is easy to remove.

Does Linux support S3 on multiprocessor computers yet? The last time I checked the kernel comments just said "/* THIS IS HARD */" and it only worked about half the time.

Not the last time I used it, but that was a while ago. The last time I used it outside of a VM anyway. Kind of a deal breaker for me as well, because I pay electricity for my current apartment, and S3 standby every 15 minutes is great for when I walk away to do something else.

I don't know what the **** an S3 is (amazon web service?). Based on emon's comment it's something about power management...

sleep/standby

You mean like S3 support is on single-core computers? Suspend is pretty much like playing russian roulette with your data on a computer that didn't come with Linux.

S3 is suspend to RAM. Everything is shut off except for the memory which is infrequently refreshed. The computer basically shuts off, including all the fans. It runs on the power supply's standby rail.

Always worked perfectly fine on my dual core Thinkpad. Guess I got lucky.

Anyway, I've never used the sleep/hibernate/etc. so it wouldn't be a reason for me not to choose linux.