I'm about to try setting up a dual booting Linux / Windows OS setup and if possible, could someone give me some answers to a couple of questions :

1) Realistically, how much space does linux actually need, I've allocated 15Gb for the install, is that enough?

2) KDE or Gnome and why?

3) How do you rip and encode DVDs under linux?

4) Are ALL codecs available for Linux and what's the best media player to use?

I'm sure there will be MANY more questions to come, and I may need a little hand holding so thanks in advance for any help I can get

Afraid I will be of little use, but may I pass on 1 thing I learned during my brief spell with Linux?

Well I will anyway, I had an issue where if I put my cursor to the right of my screen it woul lock everything up. Turned out it was my onbaord grafix card causing shit. Altho disabled via windows, and it's memory allowance from my RAM removed via the bios, Linux was still trying to use it for dual monitor display.

Cannot remember what version of Linux I was using, and from what I know it is a pretty rare issue, but I had to let ya know cos it drove me mad and there was nothing immediately obvious chucked up by search engines and Linux gurus.

Err. thanks. I think

I've used linux before (I even BOUGHT Suse 6.3!), so I know it will run, it's more a question of what can I use under linux to replicate the sort of activities I do on windows.

LOL sorry, just had to let ya know cos it drove me fricking bonkers.



Hhhm, so you are looking for an app to crash Linux?

stop trying to hijack my thread, I would actually like some answers

Divx and Xvid are both available. I never had any issues playing avi files.

As for players, dunno, I just used whatever it was that came bundled with the linux I used, but it sure did work well. Looked like shit tho the interface did.

As for space, i woulda thought 15 gig is enough, if memory serves me right it uses less space than an XP install. Pretty sure I whacked it on a much smaller partition than that, altho it was a pain in the arse cos it could not do anything with my NTFS partitions, altho this may have changed now.

I vaguely seem to remember that getting NTFS support in linux was a PITA, I'm assuming this has now changed(?)

Talk like Yoda you do.

LOL got absolutely wasted last nite I did, guess the effects worn off have not.

Can someone please put us str8 tho, has the NTFS Linux thing been resolved yet?

hi PCA,
do you want to keep installation and personal data in those 15Gb? keep in mind that e.g. if you wand to do dvd-ripping:
insane installation (install everything): i'd say 5 Gb
dual-layer dvd dump: 8 Gb
2 CD divx files (final product): 1.4 Gb
if you want to roll-out the audio track to a WAV file (e.g. to normalize or else): another 1-2 Gb

this should be a worst case scenario.

i'd suggest to use a linux native filesystem for your work, e.g. ext3 cause they handle big file sizes with no problem (provided you have a recent distribution). and you have nice error recovery in case of a crash (journaled filesystem).
i dont know how's the support for ntfs. last time i checked you could only read but not write.

gnome or kde... i dont know cause i dont use any of those (i only use fluxbox). for me it all boils down to the visual aspect. gnome looks like using a mac, kde looks like using windows. IMHO of course.

encoding... i once used mencoder (included in the mplayer package), then switched to transcode cause mencoder had problems with downsampling audio at 44100. also with transcode you can make dual audio encodes, which you cannot do with mencoder atm. lately i switched back to mencoder cause i didnt bother downsampling (i kept audio at 48000) but mainly because i discovered a couple of options to set the preload/interleave thinghy. this lets me try to do some ac3 audio movies correctly interleaved for the standalones (i didnt try this one yet).
i know there are some GUI interfaces, but inside them they run either mencoder or transcode, so mastering these is mastering all
for me it all boils down to calculate a set of parameters, e.g. video and audio bitrate, cropping parameters, etc. then i can feed transcode or mencoder giving them as parameters from the command line (of course the format is different but the values are the same).
if you're interested i'll give you more details this night when i come home and i can look inside my shell scripts.
also keep in mind to "cure" your final avi file to make it readable by all flavours of windows, as Trep here found out

as a player, i'd say mplayer is the most used. it eats all the common codecs and a load more. here's a list of supperted codecs (updated daily): http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html

hi TaK,
i just checked at http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net and the bad news is that write support is not supported yet. from the FAQ:

Good point, I'll bump it up to a 20 or 30 Gb partition



The question about NTFS was so that I could store files which were common between the two OS's (data files etc) on the NTFS partition (games and mame roms for example).

OK, I think from reading around I'll just install both and whatever other X Desktop I feel like and play


Having thought about this, and as I'll be running both XP and Linux, I think I'll just carry on with GK (at least for the time being)



I'd forgotten about mplayer (it's what Xbox Media centre is based on), thanks for the reminder

@tweye, ok mate cheers for checking.

Would this enable r/w NTFS access?

http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

That is interesting PCA.

that sounds pretty cool. maybe right after a backup, just in case

I'll give it a go as soon as I actually get linux installed

More than enough.


Matter of taste. I don't use either of those. But for beginners I always install KDE. Don't like Gnome. KDE is said to be more complicated. I'd say it is not more complicated than Windoze. Most people can use it fairly well. Gnome is too restricted for my taste. I hate developers who think they know better what I need than I do.


Have not done it too often, but there are a few programs, which can do this. Use DVD::rip. But don't expect it to be as streamlined as the Windoze stuff.


I don't know ALL codecs. But mplayer (the one and only player for Linux) can use Windoze codecs, too. When I follow the codec discussions here and on other boards, I think I have much less trouble with Linux and its codecs.

As far as I know: No. There is a commercial driver, but never used it. Don't care for ntfs.

Cheers Wargand

I'm gonna start the install in a minute, so I may be gone for a while