Newbie general questions about Kubuntu and installation / dual boot XP

[neildillamore]

I'm thinking of installing Kubuntu on a PC that is currently running XP... I can't switch over completely straight off as I want to make sure that I can access all the data that I currently have and that everything works ok under Linux first.

There's a few questions that I need answered before I can start the process and hope someone can give me a bit of assistance!

Firstly, I have a pretty big hard disk and when I installed XP I made a couple of partitions one for XP itself and another for data etc. When I did this I left a fairly sizeable chunk unformatted.

When I start installing Kubuntu will I be able to format the remaining space for it to run in or do I need to do this before I start installing??

Does Kubuntu include a boot manager by default or will I need to download / install something to allow dual booting XP? If I need to install something to do this does anyone have any recommendations of software to do this?

My other concerns with installing Kubuntu is whether it will support all the peripherals that I currently have. I have wireless broadband, canon printer, external HDD, wireless keyboard/mouse and ipod... Will all these work after install or will I have some fiddling to do to get everything to work?

Oh - and one more concern is with email - I currently use Thunderbird for email and have quite a lot of emails that I need to keep and access. If I install Thunderbird under Kubuntu can I access the same accounts that I set up under XP and get access to the emails already downloaded from the POP account?


Anyway - I hope someone can give me a hand as I'm really keen to get going with Linux - just need a hand getting started!

Cheers,

Neil.

[sky]

Re: Newbie general questions about Kubuntu and installation / dual boot XP

Hi,

In fact, it's easier to install than you think.

Anyway, I would advice you to do like the following :
- Resize the windows partition to let space for the linux install
- install kubuntu (it will install boot loader to dual boot)
- enjoy

Cheers

[neildillamore]

Re: Newbie general questions about Kubuntu and installation / dual boot XP

Thanks for the info...

So is the recommendation to just start the Kubuntu install and then during the install format/partition the disk for Linux?

Also - just as a guideline can someone tell me roughly how much space is needed for the Kubuntu partition?

Neil

[sky]

Re: Newbie general questions about Kubuntu and installation / dual boot XP

Hi,

It depends if you have windows on it already, if yes, so you shouldn't be allowed to resize partition the disk, if it's an empty disk, so let's go

About space, it's absolutely depending on what you will do.
Usually, I'm trying to get something like this (space at least)
- /boot : 250 MB highly enough
- / : following to what you want to install but 10 GB should be ok.
- swap : twice your amount of memory if lower than 1 GB, for 1 GB and over make it the same size
- /home : the most important as all your files will go there (config, personal documents, pictures you will put there, music, movies). So when you will want to reinstall the system (or you will need to) you will be able to format /boot and / but not /home and then keep all your datas. About size of this one, it's depending on what you will store in...

Cheers