Best method for dual booting

I want to dual boot my laptop with XP and a flavor of Linux.

First, I was thinking of using Ubuntu.

Second, what method is best for setting up the dual boot (from a fresh install/format)

Third, Is Ubuntu the way to go for a new linux user?

Hi skepticals,

as bootmanager I always loved grub .

For the distro question it depends on how much time you want to invest into exploring the system. I used some distros before, but most I learned about how the system components depend on each other from LFS . However here you really invest lotsa time and keeping your system up to date is hell! After this I went to Gentoo which I really loved much. There you can decide how much time you want to invest into the system installation. The more time, the better you'll know your system and the better it will perform.

But I don't know how much LFS or Gentoo will afraid Linux beginners It really is time-consuming. But once you manage it, you'll love it.

greets,
.alx

I'm no linux guru but I did do this once and it worked out okay. It is important to think out your whole finished arrangement before you start, it selfom works out to just default install your first OS then try to cajole that into accomodating a dual boot. For example, you'll need to partition your hard disk with one partiton for Windows and one, perhaps two, for your Linux and its swap. The first OS (Windows?) needs to be in a bootable primary partition but I think Linux will live in an extended one as long as your boot loader (which you write to the primary partition) points to it and you load the first bit of the bbot image into there too (there is some oddball command that let's you do this; the Linux gurus will tell you). The boot loader you use can be either the linux one (lilo or grub) or the Windows one (in which case you'll have to edit boot.ini yourself to add a menu option pointing to your other OS). Either way your system will boot into the boot loader then you choose the OS you want from the menu and off it goes

Wow, the Linux from scratch looks very interesting. I think that I do not have the time to invest in that currently. I think I will install a different version of Linux for now and go back to that at a later date.

I have used LILO and Grub in the past. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something else I should be looking in to as technology changes quickly.

Thanks for the advice.

You may also want to consider the alternative of installing Linux in a virtual machine, especially if you're just trying testing the waters.

As new Linux user you can use Ubuntu or Mandriva Linux, there is a lot of grphical tools for configure your OS.

As BootLoader you can use lilo, it's simple bootloader program to configure.