I am running the live CD of openSUSE which, btw, is now my first choice of possible installs with Mandriva coming in second and Ubunutu third. The 11.1 live CD booted, found all of my hardware and I was on the internet wirelessly in less than 5 minutes. (Lenovo R61-e laptop)…Atheros chipset was no problem and was recognized immediately as was my router.
My question: is the live CD installation the preferred method of installation for a dual boot system or do I need to download the DVD iso and do the install from that media?
I want to keep my XP Pro and have a dual boot system. I have read several articles on this board about accomplishing that task so I am aware of the possible “gotchas” and that there are other methods for using boot loaders besides Grub. I have used the recovery console several times to fix the mbr after trying the aforementioned Mandriva and Ubuntu.
If this goes well, I may consider using openSUSE and installing XP Pro in VirtualBox later on.
You can install from the LiveCD if it suits you to do it that way. Eventually if you use the official repos, you will end up with the same versions of packages anyway. It’s just that with the DVD there are more packages on it (obviously), so in some cases the package would come from the DVD rather than being downloaded from the repo, but you have to download more megabytes for the DVD up front. This may not matter to you if you are getting a DVD (or image) from a store, a friend, or free of download charge from your ISP’s cache.
I have a R61e, though I suspect a lower spec. Personally I always install with the dvd, you will find what worked from a live cd may not once the install completes - strange but true.
My Lenovo came with Vista but I have deleted it now. I Use XP in Virtual Box (but even that is more or less just a showcase install - Put it into seamless mode and watch your friends jaw drop).
I guess I’ll go with the DVD install and see what happens.
I’m also interested in using the Windows bootloader in lieu of Grub. I have found instructions in this forum and at several other sites for accomplishing this task.
Lastly, are there also specific instructions for completely removing an installation and recovering the disk space back to XP? From what I understand, I will have to use Gparted or EPM or some other third-party software to extend and reclaim disk space once a Linux installation has taken place. In doing this, will the reclaimed space be added back into my original C: drive’s partiton?
I just installed the Live CD to hard drive for permanent install this weekend. Worked really well. In fact, I may have immediate access to some multimedia files now that you don’t get with the ISO image. You still need to install the non-oss repos for multimedia per instructions in that forum.