Partition for Linux

[Densun]

Is it possible to partition off a space for Linux on my hard drive and have Windows 98 on the other? How much space should I allot Linux if I basically want Red Hat Linux and a few applications? Is it possible to delete the Linux partition and rejoin it to the Windows partition?

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[ndelo]

I guess the first question is how large is your drive? As to the other stuff, there is no way native to windows 98 to join two partitions. I believe (though I could be wrong) RedHat will take empty space on your drive and allow you to make it into a seperate partition. That is, if you don't already have an extra partition lying around. Before you do this you may want to defrag you drive. You may also want to look into something like Partition Magic.

[This message has been edited by ndelo (edited 19 December 2000).]

[Densun]

It will be a 15GB hard drive. Partition Magic doesn't happen to be free, does it?

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[This message has been edited by Densun (edited 19 December 2000).]

[ndogg]

Actually, you can have ext2fs (the Linux partition) as a file on the fat partition, but that makes Linux very slow and I don't think Red Hat supports this (you could do it yourself, but it would be a long and complicated process, but Corel, Mandrake, and some other newbie distros support it). You could, if you had Win4Lin or VMWare, have Windows on your Linux partition, but that means paying a very high cost (Win4Lin is about $90, but is very good from what I here, and Windows, supposedly, actually runs faster).

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Apples/Macintoshes can rot. BSD... sounds too much like LSD.
Penguins are the only animals sophisticated enough to wear a
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Linux, the only one with the Penguin.


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[LinuxIdiot]

Nope. Partition Magic costs about $70, but to me, it was well worth it. It's feature list is impressive, and it's easy to use.


To answer your other question, yes it's possible to dual boot a Win98 / Linux system off of the same hard drive. I've always used Partition Magic to do it, but there are ways to do it with the tools in your Linux installer. Sorry, but I can't help you with this part.

LinuxIdiot

[manual_overide]

nope. partition magic is not free. Your best bet is to backup everything on your Win98 install, then use linux's fdisk to repartition the drive. How much do you plan to use linux? If you plan to boot back and forth a lot, you need to partition the drive a little differently. If you just want to test it out, try this:
You should be able to partition the drive during the red hat install.
Delete all of your current partions.

Make a 10GB partition for windows.

Then make about a 128MB partition for linux, and whatever's left for linux.

Make the 128MB part for the swap space, and the other linux partion's mount point /

Install linux and be sure to CREATE A BOOT DISK!! do not install LILO.

reinstall windows.

Whenever you want to go to linux, just pop the boot disk in, and reboot. Otherwise, you'll always just go to windows. Booting off of a floppy is slow, but it's a nice way to learn linux and be able to keep windows for whatever you need it for.

[Densun]

I plan on switching back and forth a lot. I would use Linux mainly to learn how to use it and then later do programming for it. I won't install games for Linux, only some applications like a compiler and an Internet browser.

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[manual_overide]

Well, If you plan on switching back and forth, you can still partition that way, but it is slow to boot off a floppy. If you want to boot off of your hard disk, set up the partitions something like this:

cylinder 1-1019 for windows. (your C: Drive)

1020-1024 for linux mounted at /boot (this really only needs to be like 32MB. windows should have the rest of the space in front of this partition)

3rd partition for windows. enough to bring total windows space to about 10GB (your D: drive)

4th partition extended partition. Inside of this:
128MB swap partition

remaining space for linux mounted at /


create the boot disk just to be safe and install lilo on the MBR

install windows.

boot into linux w/ the boot disk you made.

as root, edit /etc/lilo.conf to make sure it contains a line like this:

other=/dev/hda1
label=windows

then type: lilo

this will run lilo again and overwrite anything Win98 may have put on the MBR.

When you reboot, you should be presented w/ a menu that you can use to decide if you want to boot linux or windows.