Linux - Requirements

[cairnswm]

As some of you know I have 3 Children (aged 8,6,3). My problem at the moment is that I have only 2 PCs at home (a P1 and a P2 though the P2 is quite good) and my notebook. This often causes problems as they cant all play on the PC at the same time, so I am planning to get a P4 2.4GHx, 256MB with onboard screen card. Not the greatest of PCs but enough for my kids to play games.

What do I need to enable dual boot on this machine to give me a linux PC at home? I want to be able to compile using FreePascal and run the games created with it.

[WILL]

You could try installing VMWare (It's not what your asking specifically, but it will allow you to run a 2nd OS, of any kind, under the other one unrestricted of the other - It's not an emulator in the traditional sense it accesses the BIOS directly, try a search) Only issue with that is that it's commercial, hence you'd have to aquire it somehow. :)

[{MSX}]

What do I need to enable dual boot on this machine to give me a linux PC at home? I want to be able to compile using FreePascal and run the games created with it.

First, get a list of hardware part you're going to buy and check on google if it is compatible with Linux, expecially video cards if you're doing games :P

Next, you just need to install both operating system. (I suggest debian unstable if you want the best distro, or fedora if you want the easiest)
This usually simple requires that you make two partitions on your disk: one for windows (usually NTFS) and one for Linux (usually ext3).
Since the two OS can't read/write each other filesystem, i suggest to have a third partition for shared files, formatted with fat32.
After that, you first install Windows on the first partition, then linux on the second, that will eventually create the boot menu.
That's it, apart from configuring linux :P

If you need help, just ask

[Lightning]

Install one of the "popular" win-like distributions Mandrake 10, Red Hat Fedora Core (1,2,3) or SuSE. I only tested the first two wich have verry good dual boot system. I haven't found any windows "emulators" that can decently run windows programs.
Get FPC and maybe Lazarus if you want at least some decent editing and that's it.

[cairnswm]

Thanks

I have Freepascal and Lazarus and thats the main reason I now want Linux :)

I'll see if I can get a list of components and check them. Seems a wise idea :)

[WILL]

If you are basing your choice of Linux distrubition on Free Pascal/Lazarus, sadly Debian might be the tougher one to get to work.

[Anonymous]

never really had a problem running it on debian sarge systems

you will have to install the gtk1 related stuff manually though which requires some familiarity with the package contents search features on debians site

maybe sometime i'll make a list of things to apt-get in order to make lazarus work,

[Marco V]

If you are basing your choice of Linux distrubition on Free Pascal/Lazarus, sadly Debian might be the tougher one to get to work.

That's more wrestling with Debian's unusable package system. However getting FPC to run without using apt-* and similar garbage is fairly simple.

I always install FPC on debian using the binary TGZ, and not with apt-* and stuff. (mainly because they break the packages up, and sometimes have useless dependancies).

Moreover, the debian system is out of date half of the time. (like now with 1.9.6)

I also always was able to use FPC easily on Slackware.

I heard of troubles with Gentoo, but that is mainly because they are often customizing glibc,gcc and other libraries a bit too hard, which breaks the binary interface.

[plugwash]

i don't usually use apt-get to install freepascal either mainly because i want to use development verisons.

id hardly call thier packager brain damaged though i can't say i've ever had any real trouble with it there are a few quirks to learn but its no real trouble.

when i mentioned using apt-get before (that guest was me) i was refereing to using it to install stuff lazarus depends on not using it to install lazarus itself.