INSTALLING MANDRAKE 8.0

[Corey Vaillancourt]

Hello I am very new to linux, infact I have never used linux ever before in my life. I ws wondering if anybody knew how to install 8.0 or where there was information, on how to install it. I am also interested in doing a dual boot with windows 98. I will make a partition on my hd using partition magic so that should be all set. I was just wondering if there also was a big risk in losing all the stuff on my HD too. Anything would help.
:) :)

[atl2ptown]

If youre using PQ partition magic, you will want to make a rescue disc to ensure that you dont fsck up on the install. Other than that, you are just going to have to stick the cd in the drive and follow the directions, or else you wont learn. Have you ever installed windows?

[plasmid]

mandrake has a partitioning tool that is very easy to use. I would check there website for actual instructions...but there process is fairly intuitive, and it will set you up to dual boot durring the process. The only warnings I would say are to make sure you have a boot disk for windows just in case you don't set up the duel boot properly (though this is so easy with lilo which mandrake puts on your system). Also, durring the don't do anything crazy like format your windows partition. Other than that, there is very little you can do wrong to screw things up.

-plasmid

[Corey Vaillancourt]

yea I have installed windows before. That is very simple. The question is now. How much space should I allocate for linux because I still wanna have space to install programs on my windows partition. I have a 20gb hardrive and I have about 7gb free. how much should I allocate for linux?

[fallenang3l]

Well, I gave 3.2 GB to linux. 128 MB will go to swap and that will leave me with roughly 3 GB for everything else. As it turned out, 3 GB is more than enough for a total newbie like me. 1.7 went to / partition, of which only 900 MB is filled up and the rest went to /home which has a LOT of room left. If you want to play games like UT or Q3, I would give a gig to 3 gigs more.

[cubster999]

so if u want to install drake8 and still have win98 as a second OS, you have those options to partition while installing linux mandrake?

[Derango]

With mandrake, I usualy reccomend 5 GB allocated to linux if your first getting started. If you were using a smaller distro such as debian or slackware, you might get by with 3GB.

Yes, mandrake has an awesome partition tool in its install, but if you feel more comftorable using a tool you already know, then you can make your partitions in Partition Magic. Basicly, you'll need a big partition for the actual install and a smaller one (say 128MB or so depending on the size of your ram) for the swap. make sure that the big partiton is formated for linux (this should be an option in PM. The litte one should be formated as linux swap)Then in the setup, you'll need to tell mandrake which partition you want to install linux on.

Basicly, you'll get to a screen that says somthing about partitoning, showing you a graphical representation of the partitons on your hard drive. Click on the partition you just created and click the mount point button that should appear and type a "/" in the box that appears. You should be good to go for the whole install.

[bdg1983]

Quite sure there are online user and admin guides available at www.linux-mandrake.com (http://www.linux-mandrake.com) which go through the install process and such.

Not being a Mandrake user, I did visit the site a couple of times to help someone here and found the online documentation to be very good.