ok i have windows vista ultimate 32-bit on a 130GB drive C and another D drive.i dont have any free space availble.as title says i want to dual boot it with linux.right now i have two liveCD of KNOPPIX and ubuntu 7.10.but i didnt sure that my pc have the software drivers for my hardware.so before i dual boot it,can i just boot from cd to try it out first??
live cds are as they say "LIVE". they run in your RAM, not writing anything to your hard drive. if you have no experience with linux, i would stay away from Knoppix, Ubuntu is not a "bad" choice, good for those with no *nix exposure, but once you get used to it go with another distro. No HHD space is down to the fact that winblows has formatted all your HDD space to ntfs. If you decide to install *nix, then you will be given the option to format/resize some of your HDD space to the linux file system (always pick ext3) so that you can install it. when you have installed *nix, you will be able to dual boot to either Shista or *nix. I have done this many times (with XP and *nix), but i cannot stress enough to ensure that you backup any important files you may have, as there is always the possibility (though remote) that you could lose data). once you have installed/run *nix, u can ask questions in the Linux forums, or join a few *nixheads in //irc.villageirc.net #linux-chat
