Pokerface

Yes, though to truly mess with the files on your HDD, you need to have it formatted to something other than NTFS, and Linux can't write to that format (though it can read it).

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CingularDuality

Ah, so if I'm working on one big NTFS partition, I'm out of luck?

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

=Sarc=

I've got XP as NTFS and it's not that big of a hinderance with Linux. You can mount the NTFS partition for reading but not writing. I think that's good enough. You can kind of do the same while you're in Windows reading a Linux partition but is slower because the program had load the entire file in memory or write it to disk.

What most are comfortable doing is creating a "sharing" partition formatted as FAT32. Linux has no problem handling FAT32.

Of course, your entire drive is NTFS so that's going to be a bummer to deal with. I know Partition Magic can resize your NTFS partition and free up space for another partition. However, something might go wrong with the operation.

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Lirix

http://www.transgaming.com/products_linux.php

Sorry, couldn't help but point out that gaming, while still imperfect, does happen on linux. If you've never tried it, this is probably worth a peek.

Mateo

No...there are lots of ways around that. NTFS read is good, works like it should, NTFS write is forthcoming. Most live CDs allow you to save file/state changes on a usb drive, and you can always park a file in Gmail for a bit. If you have a dual CD system, you never even need to look at the HD: a cd reader can run the OS, and cdrop a CD-RW in the writer for backups.

CingularDuality

Nice. I just got a 1G USB2 MP3 player that doubles as a USB drive... That should work nicely... Gmail's a good idea, too! I just might play around with linux now...

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Apophis

If you're going to try a Linux OS other than a LiveCD version, here is my recommendation:

Find whoever it is you're going to be asking your "help me" questions to and ask what distrobution they are running. Run the same as them until you have enough familliarity with it to venture out on your own.

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CingularDuality

I'd probably be using these forums for support, and it looks like there's a variety of distros being used...

I don't even have time right now to play around with something like this, but I've been meaning to tinker with linux for a long time and just haven't been inclined to mess with dual boots and seperate partitions. This new revelation eliminates the last of my excuses not to experiment, though...

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Apophis

Don't forget, there's always VMWare.

I run Fedora 3, RedHat Enterprise 9, and Solaris x86 on my laptop under VMWare for various testing/development purposes. The main OS on my laptop is Windows XP. VMWare is a great way to play with a new OS without worrying about dual boot, partitioning, or loosing any of the data on your existing drives.

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Mateo

Yeah, Apophis, we know about VMWare, just we don't have deep pockets. Or we can't expense our copies to our clients.

CingularDuality

Yikes! $200 just to be able to run more than one OS? No thanks...

I can see how that would be useful for someone in IT, though...

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Apophis

I look at it this way. Some people go out and buy some parts to build a machine to play around with Linux. I would wager that they spend around $200 or more just buying parts to assemble a machine. VMWare is a cost effective alternative to that.

I don't have deep pockets or anything, my company bought it for me! :-)

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Mateo

More cost effective, however, would be an extra HD. That's what I do. 120GB for XP, 80GB for the linux flavor of the moment. I may switch that around though, since XP is starting to get annoying.