Gentoo and XP duel boot questions.

im extremely new with any linux type OS, but i felt it was quite necessary, so i decided to install it on my laptop that has XP already installed.

I figured to do a duel boot.
Ive never done anything like this before.

so what ive done, is create 4 partitions
1. ext2 50mb, which is the boot
2. NFTS, 200,000mb, XP os
3. linux-swap, 2046mb, the swap
4. ext3, 100,000mb. gentoo installed

now, i did some reading and come upon, something regarding the 1024 cylinder boundary.
so putting my boot in the first 50mb was to be safe, not sure if that was necessary, but just encase any one was unsure, the xp OS did boot, after it was past the 1024 cylinder, or what magicpatition considered the 1024th (this is the program i used and it stated the partition with XP was pass 1024 boundary)

i just now installed Gentoo, so now having both XP and Gentoo, in there respected partitions, I have two questions.

1.what is the next step to make it so i am able to select the OS i would like to boot.
(gentoo boots and i have no option to select XP)

but the next question spawns out of the inability to log into gentoo.

2.during installation i made an extra effort to write down the root password, user name and passwords, for log in.
So being 100% confident that the user name and password are correct, i am 100% unsure why it tells me they are invalid, lol.


any help is greatly appreciate. Thanks

 

i'm in school for visual effects, and i needed an OS to run the app Shake so my instructor recommended Gentoo, or Sabayon.

 

update*

i have created user and a password after logging into the root, and i have a working user log in.

but i had no idea it was going to be as complicated as this, lol.

 

haha yeah, i agree.

just logging in a chore. lol
how do u feel about Ubuntu?

 

I wouldn't knock Gentoo as a good way of learning Linux the hard way, same way I started out a few years back. If you stick at it, you'll learn a lot more about the internal workings of everything. Of course, you're only learning a lot of that because Gentoo throws you in the deep end and can be a right bastard, but if you're dedicated and/or a masochist, it is rewarding, you'll be able to get yourself out of just about any mess you can put yourself in. And then you'll probably still get sick of compiling everything and end up on something like Arch or Debian where you still get to pick and choose everything, but don't have the agony of compiling.

You should have installed grub as part of the Gentoo install. There should be a section in the Gentoo handbook about configuring grub, /boot/grub/menu.lst . In there you can configure a boot menu that will let you pick which you want to boot, default option, timeout, colour scheme etc. Same thing will be present on almost every distro, but you'll probably find Ubuntu automatically detects your Windows and configures itself automagically.

I personally just use Ubuntu these days, mostly out of laziness. End of the day, Linux is so configurable that you can make just about any distro look and feel like any other, and Ubuntu is so ubiquitous that almost every FOSS project generates .deb packages for it. That, and the girlfriend needs something user friendly, so in the interest of keeping everything familiar for her between laptops and desktops, Ubuntu it is.

Good luck mate! Christ, Apple don't miss you with the pricing, do they?

 

i know, the price is f'd up.

u can but it for apple, for just 500 bucks.
I just got off another forum that was saying it was a typo, lol.

but thanks for everyones help.