New convert and kit idea

[Michelle Lowman]

I have my first convert among my English students at PC. She brought her
laptop to IF2, but whoever was doing the install gave up after her
machine wouldn't boot from the CD. She wants to dual-boot with XP, so
she's going to bring her laptop to class Monday, and I'm going to
install Red Hat for her.

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to create a "conversion kit"
for people who want to dual-boot. That way, if you ever run into anyone
who is ready to try Linux but isn't quite ready to give up Windows, you
can set them up right away. Knoppix is one alternative, but I was
thinking of (1)fips (or PartitionMagic if you don't mind paying), or
parted with a boot disk (although I've never used this one--I think it's
non-destructive, but correct me if I'm wrong), along with (2)your
favorite distro on CD(s), and (3)don't forget a boot.img floppy in case
you can't get the box to boot from CD. I've used fips with older
versions of Windows, but has anyone tried it with Windows 2000 or XP?  I
couldn't get it to work with 2000 and I've never tried with XP. The kit
could include partitioning instructions, etc. with screenshots for the
visual learner (like me :)).

Whaddya think?