flash8pro's Dell XP reinstall extended

[Neuge]

I'm getting a new Dell laptop delivered on Wednesday. I'm also looking to dual boot it with linux.

I've done a bit of research and Suse 10.1 appears to install flawlessly with very little tweaking on Inspirons.

My question is, what partitioning do you enthusiasts recommend? And what file format and size do you recommend for the partition that can be read by both XP and linux?

[BiPolar_Nut]

Depends if you want read access or read/write. I use Suse 9.3 because at the time I installed it, that was the latest version that VMWare officially supported. If you just need read access, then don't worry, SuSe can read NTFS just fine. Figure out how much space you need on the doze side and use the rest for 'nix. I really don't know what SuSe sets for default 'nix partitions, but I generally (for any 'nix distro, linux or *BSD) make separate partitions/slices for /, /home, /var, /tmp, /usr, and sometimes split farther for /usr/local and /bin/local depending on the use of the machine. In Linux, those are all separate partitions. In *BSD they're slices (subdivisions of a partition).

Without a doubt, use NTFS on your doze install. If you need to save file from 'nix that doze car read, make a FAT32 partition or use a USB keydrive to swap files from nix to doze. XP on FAT32 is just lame...no file ownership nor permissions.

Disclaimer I haven't checked out SuSe beyond version 9.3. If it has read/write NTFS drivers then you don't need a separate partition nor need to swap to keydrive files to get stuff to doze...just use NTFS on doze and read/write to your heart's content from 'nix. I don't dual boot (have plenty of machines here) so I'm not quite up to date on the status of NTFS 'nix drivers. Any file swapping I do is over the network.

GL!

[Neuge]

Thanks for the help, I got everything set up just how I wanted it. I also managed to hack the Wifi driver into the kernel. That took about a day, lol. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I'm still having a few problems though maybe someone can help me with. My laptop is a Core 2 duo so I installed the x86_64 version of Suse 10.1, which seems to have a few short comings. It didn't install ANY fortran compilers and I can't find any packages for it in YaST. That, and almost certainly other problems I haven't found yet, are giving me fits trying to configure and compile some of the software I use.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[BiPolar_Nut]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the help, I got everything set up just how I wanted it. I also managed to hack the Wifi driver into the kernel. That took about a day, lol.

[/ QUOTE ] sweet.

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It didn't install ANY fortran compilers

[/ QUOTE ] wow...you still use fortran? cool.....I think lol [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

You may not find a fortran package in yast, but certainly there's a generic package out there for fortran support either as an .rpm or a .tgz. I haven't looked but would be pretty surprised if they disappeared. I've never done any fortran nor had a use for it. What exact difficulties are you having/capabilities lacking?

[Neuge]

[ QUOTE ]
wow...you still use fortran? cool.....I think lol [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]I don't directly use fortran, but many of the libraries I use need those compilers. You'd be surprised how many researchers still use it. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
You may not find a fortran package in yast, but certainly there's a generic package out there for fortran support either as an .rpm or a .tgz. I haven't looked but would be pretty surprised if they disappeared. I've never done any fortran nor had a use for it. What exact difficulties are you having/capabilities lacking?

[/ QUOTE ]That's the thing. I know the gcc package includes fortran compilers, but they seem to be absent in the 64bit distribution (which doesn't surprise me, fortran itself doesn't support more than 32 bit architecture without pg compilers). Every package I try to configure, it faults out after it fails to find the fortran compilers. And the ones that don't fault out on that, fault out during the make/make install.

One even asks me to define an environment variable that clearly sets itself in the makefile.

I'm confused, but I really think it's a deficiency in those compilers. And I can't find a 64bit binary distribution other than the AMD64 one which doesn't seem to work for the core 2 duo architecture.

[BiPolar_Nut]

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but they seem to be absent in the 64bit distribution

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Multiple threads were running through my head and I totally missed the 64 bit part. How comfortable are you w/ other 'nix flavors? You may have better luck with the FreeBSD amd64 version. I was also looking at NetBSD's amd64. The NetBSD one specifically stated 32-bit Linux apps are not yet supported in emulation mode, but it is being worked on. i386 bianries are supported tho (so perhaps compiling would work better for you than it has on Linux).

FreeBSD also listed a couple more AMD processors than NetBSD (Truon and Sempron). I've only run 64 bit systems on Alpha and Sun hardware, and not recently. I have no clue if FreeBSD would work for you but it could have a better shot than Linux at this point.

[Neuge]

I've never used BSD and I'd rather just stay with Suse, or maybe another Linux distro. Suse installed gcc 4.1.0 and I just tried to upgrade to 4.1.1, but am having trouble compiling the new compiler (lol).

Supposedly 4.2 will have full support core 2 duo architecture, and it's in phase 3 right now so hopefully it gets released soon.

Also, just to clear up a point I made earlier which doesn't matter. Fortran77 doesn't support more than 32 bit floating point numbers. Fortran90, however, does. The Portland Group hacked 64 bit support into their pgf77 compiler and charge ridiculous amounts of money for it since so many people need it and their's is the only compiler which does it.

[BiPolar_Nut]

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but am having trouble compiling the new compiler (lol).

[/ QUOTE ] Stop...you're dredging up painful Slackware 3.0 memories for me!!