Fedora / WinXP Question

[Starshine]

I currently have a desktop that has WinXP on it and due to it being a bit outdated, I am tired of the sluggishness that happens with it. I have a copy of Fedora 10 on DVD that I am thinking of switching it to.

My questions to anyone that can help answer are :

1. I have two external drives ( one with photos / graphics and the other with windows games ) if I switch the desktop to Fedora, can I still play the windows games somehow?

2. I will need something similiar to Office 2007 to be able to do my schoolwork. I will also need an IRC client, e-mail client ( like outlook ) and instructions on how to setup a network with another fedora machine and a Vista laptop. As well as setting up my All-in-One Printer.

Any help would be great. Hopefully, if I can get the answers to this today, I may do the switch over this afternoon.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[steronius]

http://OpenOffice.org

http://Virtualbox.org for a virtual xp box... but your directx games wont go.

i'm sure the rest isn't difficult to find.

 

[Starshine]

Thank you.

I already knew about OpenOffice. I wasn't aware of the Virtual Box, but I don't know if my old desktop has enough RAM to handle running that. ( I read it over )

I have heard something about dual boot, but I am not sure how to set it up like that. I may just have to go back to my previous thought and reinstall XP and put a unix distro on my other desktop.

 

[Livewire]

Thank you.

I already knew about OpenOffice. I wasn't aware of the Virtual Box, but I don't know if my old desktop has enough RAM to handle running that. ( I read it over )

I have heard something about dual boot, but I am not sure how to set it up like that. I may just have to go back to my previous thought and reinstall XP and put a unix distro on my other desktop.

Google how to Dual-Boot Fedora and XP - that's probably the best if what you want is to still be able to play the windows games.


I'm not sure if Fedora does it on its own or not, but once it's set up for dual boot, you'll get a screen after starting your computer that'll say something similar to this:

BOOTING OPTIONS

Windows XP
Fedora Core 10
Boot from CD/DVD


Suse (another linux distro) picked up that I had XP already installed so it did the boot-loader on its own; worst that could happen is Fedora won't do it on its own so you'd have to install it manually, which shouldn't be that bad anyways. My guess is Fedora may very well detect the XP/Vista install and ask you if you want to install a boot-loader so you can still use the other OS.

Seems nicer than Windows at least; Windows tends to not look for any OS that isn't a Windows product and it won't offer to boot-load it for you



My own experiences with dual booting were easy as eating delicious cherry pie though - Install XP, Install Suse, Suse prompts that it found Windows and wants to install Boot loader, answered Okay, finished install, rebooted, bootloader already in place!

Then there was Install 98se, Install XP, XP finds 98se and asks if I should try to dual boot, answered yes, rebooted, defaulting to XP but 98se's still here and usable too. XP's bootloader looked like crap though, Suse's had graphics and whatnot

 

[Starshine]

Thank you LiveWire.
I looked up SuSE and I am assuming I would want to get the OpenSuSE?

Looks like I may be spending part of tomorrow reinstalling XP and then attempting to dual boot with Fedora or downloading SuSE and going from there.

I just want something to learn from and maybe easier to stash it on my other system I have just lying around. I have a KVM switch to bounce from machine to machine ... I am in the process of slowly upgrading one of the two desktops ( I don't have the $ to buy a desktop outright, or I'd just use it to buy myself a laptop )

I have posted before about wanting to turn one of the two desktops into a server ( to manage the two external drives, the other desktop, an "All-in-one" printer and a wireless laptop ) but I didn't get very far in the thread ... or at least the answers were a bit confusing.

(edited)
Just to add, this system currently has :

Memory : 627.5 MB RAM ( A friend is searching for some spare RAM for me, but may be a while. Wouldn't mind boosting it to 2 Gig )

Processor : AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3400+
Available space : 177.6 GB

 

[Livewire]

I honestly can't remember what suse I've got, it's a really old copy and I quite disliked it >_<


http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/dual_boot_fedora_xp/ <--- start with XP installed and read through that once before going, seems to be exactly what you'd need

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]If everything looks good here, click next. Now we are asked if we want to install a boot loader. Fedora uses the GRUB boot loader, so that's what we'll go with. We want the boot loader installed on hda, so that when the mast boot record is read during system boot we are asked to boot to Linux or Windows.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

^ That's the part I was looking for; it seems Fedora is just like Suse in that if it picks up that there's another OS on the system, it will let you install the bootloader and allow both OS's to run




If you've already got fedora you might as well go with that, Suse just seemed like a royal pain in the *BLEEP!* to me.
[/FONT]



Edit: Oh, if the system you're installing on can run xp, it'll run linux. Seems linux has WAY lower system requirements anyways, so it'll probably run a bit better, although you may very well have some slow-down as you get used to the way it works

Here's hoping your foray into the linux world goes a bit better than mine (mine ended with Vista replacing everything >_<)