Mandrake 10.0 - anything I shoudl know

[Heartz]

First my setup.

Windows XP running on one partition.

Another 25 gig fat32 partition currently empty. I want to install Mandrake on my partition.

This is an office PC and I need to run windows as well.


My question is:

Will I be affected by the dual boot bug if I partition a swap/root and home directory in the empty partition? Or does this bug only affect those who resize their NTFS drives?

I need to make sure. Anybody got any insights? Any pointers to ensure that I don't screwup my WIndows partition in the process of installing mandrake would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Landy]

First question is why are you installing Mandrake 10.0 when 10.1 is out? Also, I was only aware of a dual boot bug being with Fedora Core. I'm using Mandrake 10.0 on my windows xp box right now. It works fine for me. But, if I were you I would try and installed the bootloader onto floppy disk rather then the mbr, this way all you have to do is leave the floppy out of the drive to boot windows and nobody will be any the wiser of there being Linux on your PC if you keep hold of the disk.

[jerbear]

I can't fully answer your question, but I can tell you that I have a laptop originally with XP Pro on it. I installed Mandrake 10.0 in free space on the drive and just put the boot loader in the mbr and I have no trouble at all.

JB

[cybertron]

Hmm, yeah I haven't heard of any dual-boot bugs in Mandrake, but I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist. As far as messing up Windows, as long as you don't play with that partition at all during installation it should leave everything untouched. If you do install the bootloader in the mbr, then Mandrake will most likely detect your Windows installation and add it to the menu automagically. I dual-boot Mandrake and XP just fine on my laptop, and I would say it's unlikely that you'll have any trouble. Mandrake's made most things pretty automatic.

Either 10.0 or 10.1 should be fine. 10.0 Official should technically be a little more stable than 10.1 Community, but the Community releases are considered stable themselves. The Official releases just improve upon that. Of course, if you can't get ahold of 10.1 for some reason then it's a moot point:)