Reforming Microsoftaholic Needs Know Best Way To Install Linux

[Edlin]

Hi All

New on these boards, have been running a MS OS since DOS 3.3
And want to give Linux another go,

I tried Red Hat 5 a few years ago but didn't get very far with it,

I just tried installing Debian but my ISO must have been corrupt so I will try anything next,

Basically I want to know from experienced users what the best way to partition my drives would be, I would like you have windows XP install but dont mind trashing the existing installation,

And also what distro you think I should use, as I am a blank slate as far as linux goes,

My drives are:

18gb 10K SCSI
9gb 7.2K SCSI

120gb 7.2K IDE

Thanks guys! :)

[Edlin]

Oh forgot to mention, I have an i386 (Athlon Tbred 2200)

Thanks :)

[mdwatts]

Have a look through our new '.iso confused' forum for distro suggestions as we do not want to start a distro flame war AGAIN. :)

Mandrake, Redhat/Fedora or SuSE are usually the recommended distros for beginners. Visit each of their websites to help you decide.

Most distros have online installation documentation that sometimes includes partitioning suggestions. You can always search through this forum to find previous threads on this same question.

18gb 10K SCSI
9gb 7.2K SCSI
120gb 7.2K IDE

Which drive(s) will you be installing Linux on and how much space are you planning to allocate for Linux?

[frimann]

Suse-Mandrake-Redhat/fedora are the most newbee frendly.
With mandrake and Suse it is possible to just boot up of the install cd and the installer offers to resise windows partition and make a room for linux and also installs bootloader whits you can boot into linux our windows.
Redhat might be similar.

The installers are very newbee frendly.

[mrBen]

Probably the first thing to do is to get hold of a 'LiveCD' type distro and give it a whirl without touching your drives.

Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/) is definitely worth a go.

From there, you should be able to install without damaging XP. If you _want_ to reinstall XP, do it first, otherwise things won't be quite so good. It might be simplest to dedicate 1 drive to Linux, and thus the other remains more-or-less untouched.

Ooops - hometime. I'm going to move this to the distro forum, for people to help.

[Edlin]

Thanks guys,

My idea was to install linux on my 9gb SCSI and keep that whole thing for linux.

I have WinXP on my 18gb SCSI, so is it best to keep that installed and use Linux to dual boot?

Mrben - I already had a look at knoppix, I was so impressed that now I want to try a 'real' install.

[frimann]

If you are intrested in installing Knoppix to the hd this tells you how:

http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHowTo

Knoppix is basicly the same as Debian unstable, and the other distros(Suse, Mandrake, Redhat) have some admin config utilitys Debian has not.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Edlin

My idea was to install linux on my 9gb SCSI and keep that whole thing for linux.

I have WinXP on my 18gb SCSI, so is it best to keep that installed and use Linux to dual boot?


Which of those HD's is the first boot device? That will decide where you install the Linux bootloader.

Are you planning to store lots of mp3's etc. in your user's home directory? I don't, so I do not require a large /home directory partition.

The LinuxPlanet link in my signature does have tutorials on partitioning.

[infiniphunk]

I went to install MandrakeLINUX on the same hard-drive as my wXP home edition system and had no problems. I dunno if all this was unnecessary, but I used P-Magic to make a small FAT partition in front of C:, then I installed BootMagic into there. This was all done following instrcts offrd by P-Magic(8.0) I then used the "install another OS" tool and installed Mandrake9.2 from the discs I burned the ISO's to. Installation was pretty easy, except for some issues locating hardware drivers. I have since then downloaded and installed Mandrake10.0beta, and this works even better. Now I have windows AND LINUX to choose from when I hit the power button, both of these are on my main drive(60GB) and I have a 80GB slave-drive to archive all my music/data/crap onto. YEHA!!!!!!:cool:

[Edlin]

Thanks a lot guys,

I downloaded and installed Fedora Core on my PC last night,

In the end to save confusion, I disabled all my Hdds except my 9gb scsi,
Installed Fedora on that, The enabled my other Hdds after,

I will use my SCSI host adaptor to switch between OS,

I will install fedora on one of my spare servers at work today, to see how goes,

I have some hardware trouble, but I will start new threads in the right board,

Thanks again :)

[maccorin]

congrats on the new linux install

welcome to the world of lots of configuration, but for a big payoff :D