Going to a new distro...

[Special Ed]

After taking a course on UNIX in the summer time, I decided I like the filesystem structure, and security far maore than Windows, and I decided to give Linux a try at my home . I have since completely abandoned Windows :D (but I have not uninstlled it). I downloaded Mandrake 8.0 as my first taste of Linux, and for the most part I like it. However, I would like to use a distro that is not so 'user-friendly'. My over-all goal is to move completely away from the user friendly distros and eventually use the real tough ones (I hear both Debian and Slackware are difficult versions to get the hang of)... I have decided to move on to RedHat Linux 7.1, and maybe in a few months try out another distro

Anyways, here are my questions:
1. If I reformat EVERYTHING on my computer (two harddrives, one with MDK 8.0, and the other with WinME) will LILO be deleted as well? If it isn't how do I go about deleting the MBR so LILO is gone as well?

2. Is it possible to have multiple OS recognised by LILO .I am going to try to have about four OS on my computer at once: DOS 6.22 (don't ask), WinME, Linux RedHat 7.1, and FreeBSD. If so, is it a hugely difficult task to do this type of booting, and where can I find more information on accompolishing this?

I know there are alot of things to be anwered, but just send me in the right path, and I should be good to find my way. :)

[Big_daddy]

1. fdisk /mbr will stomp a mudhole in LILO

2. Yes, you can have multiple systems. LILO handles it,.

[S.D.Willie]

you can have more than one o/s in lilo.
i think booting to a dos prompt with a 95/98 start up disk and typing "fdisk /mbr" should get rid of lilo for you. mandrake is the way to go for starters like you have. i had 4 systems on one drive at a time so it IS possible. more info from others on the way...... :)

SD

[Cuthbert]

If you do fdisk /mbr you'll get rid of anything in the mbr.

As for lilo, yes, you can have it load multiple os's. Check out www.linuxdoc.org (http://www.linuxdoc.org) for all the info you could possibly want about anything!

Enjoy! :D

[Cuthbert]

I must type slow :)! Two guys beat me to it while I was typing :p

[Special Ed]

Thanks for the help. Now one more silly little question about my idea of having four OS on one computer:

Can I use the fdisk command in Linux to create all the neccessary partitions for what I want to do? What I was planning on doing was paritioning my 20 gig HD into two parts for the M$ OSes, then paritoning my 30 gig HD for the two *nixes. I would install WinME, then Linux, then use fdisk in Linux to create a FAT16 slice for DOS, then installing FreeBSD on the HD space that I did not use on the Linux HD. Does that make sense, or does any one have a better idea of going about this whacky idea?

[bdg1983]

Yes that sounds fine. Primary partitions for Windows/Dos and Logicals for the nixes.