Should I repartition ??

[Janet]

Here is my situation. Ive got Win98 running on a 900 meg partition and Ive just installed Mandrake 8.0 on the balance of 1600 meg. At the start of the install Mandrake told me I was low on resources and when Id finished installing on the reboot harddrake failed. I tried running the Rpm manager to install Opera which Id just downloaded and the RPM hung. Not everything else just that package. I tried clicking on the package which brings up the rpm again and again it didnt work just hung.
So what to do. I tried reinstalling with the same result. So Im thinking maybe I need more hard disk space (what do you think ??) Should I repartition the drive. Im worried about loosing Windows as I need it and havnt got my copy around to reinstall it should things go wrong. Should I repartition the Windows section to free up more space?? Then repartition with Linux. Im not sure what to do. Any advice welcome.

[FoBoT]

how much ram/memory do you have?
did you do the full/mega install, or chop out some pieces?

[Janet]

I have 32 megs Ram. I did the full install. Mandrake 8.0 gives quite a few set options. It is supposed to calculate for you how many packages the system can handle by leaving out less important packages from chosen catagories if you choose more catagories. It has another option where you can select from a list of 600 or so packages.I wonder if I could cut it down that way without leaving out something important?

[X_console]

Mandrake is known to be a bloated system. You most probably do not need everything that it installs. Some important things you need:

kernel
basic networking tools
development tools
development libraries
X-Window
window manager
desktop manager (optional but nice)

Everything else you can more or less scratch. Also, yo probably just want one window manager and desktop manager. If you opt to go for KDE, then don't install any window managers and just install KDE. A lot of things are really uneeded, such as the GIMP graphics program. You could always install it later if you feel the need to be artsy. :)

[cga]

You can set the percentage of pacakeges to install to a lower value and Mandrake will install the required things. You don't have to worry about not installing something that the system will need to run.

I always use the "custom" "minimal" option, then deselect most of the package groups, and set the percent to install to the lowest value. Then, once the install is complete, which takes about 4 minutes, I go into RPMDrake and install the other packages that I want. This gives you a much system, in my opinion.