Running 2 OS's on 1 Box?

[krs_goss]

I'm thinking of trying Linux out, however; for school and interacting with the masses, a Windows platform is essential. I have an AMD-K62 300 and a FIC VA-503+, 5.1 gb Western Dig. IDE drive. This system isn't even running yet, but when its finished I'm going to install NT 4.0 WS that I got with VB5.0...

Some questions are, can NT even partition to run another OS, and is this a time-bomb waiting to go off if I can install Linux and NT together?

I'm thinking of buying a secondary HD and installing Linux on this, that way the two OS's share absolutely nothing in regards to where they reside. Is this the best approach, especially since the cost of drives are dropping so much?

Is it risky or difficult to set a dual-boot with my mboard? Are there going to be any hardware issues, such as the OS's fighting for devices? I'm new to hardware stuff, so this might not be relevant... I'm just wondering if it creates performance issues if NT configures a device, and then Linux boots up during a different session and configures it another way...

Any advice from those who have done is this or know about it is appreciated.

TIA,
Kris

[Slump]

The hardware isn't reconfigured in any way by the OS, it's the OS that is configured, so you won't get any hw issues of that kind.
There should be no problems running Linux and NT on the same disk, but if you can afford another disk that's a smoother solution. Actually I've run W95, NT and Linux on the same disk and it worked.

[daveyp]

Slump's right - you should have no problems with that setup. If you haven't got round to installing anything on your system yet, then it's worth setting up the Linux partitions at the same time as you first parition and format your new drive. Use DOS fdisk to create the partitions and format the Linux ones as FAT16 - then when you install Linux, get it to change their partition numbers to 82 & 83 (Linux Native and Linux Swap) as needed.

If this is all double-dutch to you, then e-mail me when you are getting ready to do the installations of NT and Linux and I'll talk you thru it.

Good luck!
Davey P

[daveyp]

Oooops - forgot my e-mail address!

Davey P
davepattern@hotmail.com