Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 19:38:49 -0400 (EDT) From: CyberPeasant <djv@bedford.net> To: randyfoo@pacific.net.sg (Randy Foo Jong Suan) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multi-boot Different OSes Message-ID: <199805162338.TAA29289@lucy.bedford.net> In-Reply-To: <000001bd80ba$f71a24c0$06f518d2@randyfoo.pacific.net.sg> from Randy Foo Jong Suan at "May 16, 98 07:08:32 pm"
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Randy Foo Jong Suan wrote: [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...] > 2) Now, I plan to purchase a new hard disk, SOLELY for the purpose > of installing and learning Linux and perhaps FreeBSD too. > > 2.1) Is it advisable to install more than one Linux OS on the same > hard disk but on different partitions? > > E.g. Red Hat, Slackware and FreeBSD on separate partitions. FreeBSD isn't Linux. They have separate code bases and histories, and different licenses. There's no good reason to have more than one Linux OS on a machine. They differ only in their installation methods and in what accessories are included. RH and Slack are probably the most popular. RH is probably easiest to install. > 2.2) Based on above example of the 3 products, how many partitions > must I create to install the above three? You will need one DOS partition for BSD; BSD is able to subdivide a DOS style partition. The terminology gets confusing: what you are calling a "partition", BSD calls a slice. BSD calls the subdivisions of a DOS partition (a BSD slice), a "partition". The BSD practice of calling the subdivision of a DOS partition a "partition" is older than MS-DOS or PC computers. (Don't blame BSD, in other words. :) Linux generally uses DOS partitions directly. Typically you will need a minimum of three DOS partitions for Linux, one for /, one for swap, and another for everything else. (typically and generally. You can get away with only one DOS partition for Linux, but this is a linux issue. A good Linux list for these questions is linux-newbie@vger.rutgers.edu, or linux-admin@vger.rutgers.edu). > 2.3) Do I need additional partitions for swap space? > (My PC is a standard Pentium 200 with 64 Mb RAM) You will need space for swap with either OS. about 128MB I would guess without further information. Sharing this space between Linux and BSD is a deep secret, that I don't know about. For BSD, a separate DOS partition (slice) for swap is not needed. (BSD will use its own partition of its own slice). If you're new to Unix, I would say to pick just one OS for now, and would base that decision on what your friends are using. Since you seem to lean towards Linux, I'd say go with RedHat. For BSD you have three free choices, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. For the newbie, FreeBSD has the best "user-friendliness" and easy installation. The other two are aimed more at the experienced user. The 3 BSDs are very close; learning one will mean learning the other two. For the newbie, pick FreeBSD. Once installed, all 3 BSDs are more or less the same. As a newbie, you would have to poke around for quite a while to discover the differences. BSD in general has a slight advantage in that many textbook examples run without change on BSD; with linux there is sometimes a problem. Dave -- <----. mail-to: djv@bedford.net <----|=================================== <----' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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