Re: Debian GNU/Linux
TheChucklinTrain@aol.com wrote:
> If i download this program do i risk crashing windows?
Not sure what you mean by "this program". Downloading programs, etc, in and of
itself, should not crash Microsoft Windows. Yet we all know that Windows can crash at
the simplest things, so that's no guarantee.
I think what you mean is: "If I install Debian GNU/Linux, do I risk losing Windows?"
This is a complex question. As a general rule, when you install another OS, you need
a separate partition or drive to do so. Since Windows typically sets aside the entire
hard drive for its own partition, there's no room for another OS. If you have a
second hard drive, this reduces any risk considerably. If you don't have a second
hard drive, you'll have to repartition your drive, which is fraught with risk. There
are (relatively) safe ways of doing this, but suffice it to say that a second hard
drive is the safest (and easiest) method. (You could also install a version of Linux
that rides on top of the Windows partition, but that's a half-way solution, and you
won't be happy with it.)
Assuming you have a second hard drive (or partition - for example, if you have an
8 GB drive and it's FAT16 formatted and therefore you have C:, D:, E:, and F: drives,
each 2GB, and one of them's empty, you could use it), your risk of hosing MS-Windows
is fairly low. If during the installation you decide to not use LILO, but to use a
boot floppy instead, in order to boot into Linux, your risk of corrupting MS-Windows
is almost non-existent.
Nonetheless, things can go wrong. A flakey disk controller can work just well enough
to work with one file system, but can sling bits when trying to work with two
disparate file systems. Or a power outage half-way through the install can corrupt
the partition table. Or etc etc etc.
But to answer the spirit of your question (or at least what I perceive to be the
spirit of what I perceive to be your question), no, the risk of hosing MS-Windows is
no greater than the risk of installing the newest Internet Explorer, and in my
experience, has less chance of damaging your setup than installing IE has.
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