<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="LinuxDoc-Tools 0.9.21"> <TITLE>Linux+WindowsNT mini-HOWTO: Linux accompanied with Windows 2000 and Windows XP</TITLE> <LINK HREF="Linux+WinNT-9.html" REL=next> <LINK HREF="Linux+WinNT-7.html" REL=previous> <LINK HREF="Linux+WinNT.html#toc8" REL=contents> </HEAD> <BODY> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT-9.html">Next</A> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT-7.html">Previous</A> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT.html#toc8">Contents</A> <HR> <H2><A NAME="s8">8.</A> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT.html#toc8">Linux accompanied with Windows 2000 and Windows XP</A></H2> <P>2005-10-09</P> <P><EM>Recently I had a hard-disk failure and my more_than_a_year old Linux/Windows 2000 home system disappeared. When considering what to have on a new purchased disk, I decided to try Linux with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP.</EM></P> <P>In short, the new disk was of 40 GB and I made a half of it (20 GB) a NTFS partition for Windows XP. It became so called C: disk. The second partition of 10 GB (FAT32) became D: disk of Windows 2000. As usual, you have to repeat installations of Microsoft products for several times - before they even start behaving partly as you expect from them. To be more precize, it looked that Windows 2000 had to be installed <EM>before</EM> Windows XP, in order its boot entry got a part of XP's list of boot entries (If I remember, I tried it the opposite way and it didn't work).</P> <P>Then I used the remaining 10 GB to install Mandrake 9.1 (Bamboo) and I made it without problems - The only minor issue was that a try of disk-type installation where Linux files were placed on an existing NTFS partition failed because Linux setup actually did not manage to locate installation files on a NTFS partition. (That was why I made Windows 2000 installation on a FAT32 file system - because later I could use it for Mandrake 9.1 disk-type setup).</P> <P>So far - so good. One of the main things I wanted to make working within all three environments was the e-mail client. You bet, an another open source solution was available: the Mozilla suite. For Windows operating systems I used Mozilla 1.7.11 and for Linux I used Mozilla 1.6 (an older xft version - some newer ones I was not able to install). And, as usual for me, I wanted all of them to share my mailbox files, i.e. I wanted to access my incoming emails from all and each operating system - booted at the time.</P> <P>In order to make that possible, I chose Mozilla under Windows 2000 (FAT32) to become the 'central location' for saving the mailbox files. That means I had to make some changes within other two Mozilla's configurations - to make them capable to read/write from/to the first chosen mailbox location (FAT32). For Linux I did the following:</P> <P>Instead of keeping an 'original' Linux-native location: <PRE> /home/misko/.mozilla/default/fydeba98.slt/Mail/solair.eunet.yu </PRE> I changed to this mounted one: <PRE> /mnt/win_d/Documents and Settings/misko/Application Data/Mozilla/Profiles/default/oeu1tmbd.slt/Mail/solair.eunet.yu </PRE> </P> <P>As a result of that change, now it is possible for me to download email messages from within one O.S. - then to read them from another O.S. - and finally reply/send the email from the 3rd one environment. The only minor drawback is that each operating system is likely to 'remember' only its own last known state of Mozilla's Mail & Newsgroups. In order to get a 'refreshed' state of e-mail folders, a user has to click on a mailbox name. Another solution is to activate an option of 'Compact all folders ...'.</P> <P>What belongs to my 'wish-list' now, is to continue upgrading all three Mozilla's (at least that old one v1.6 that runs under Mandrake). It makes me wonder if I could use a 'regular' one (instead of xft's) - although I remember that older regular's were producing awful fonts under Linux environment. I am not sure if things got improved.</P> <P>The second important task is to install one of the most popular radio amateur software, also an open-source, called LinFBB (FBB for Linux). More details related to that you can find in another Linux manual: the <A HREF="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/FBB.html">FBB</A>HOWTO.</P> <HR> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT-9.html">Next</A> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT-7.html">Previous</A> <A HREF="Linux+WinNT.html#toc8">Contents</A> </BODY> </HTML>