Mandrake 7.2 or 8.0?

[ravonaf]

Hello

I have a question maybe someone here can answer. I want to install Mandrake on a PC I recently built. I have a copy of Mandrake 7.2 on cd. I would like to install Mandrake 8.0 instead. How easy is it to upgrade to 8.0 after installing 7.2? Is it more trouble than it's worth to install 7.2 and then upgrade to 8.0 since I'll be installing from scratch? What do you recommend? Are their even enough difference between 7.2 to 8.0 to even bother with 8.0? Also this machine will be dual booting w/ Win98.

Thanks.

[j.harrison]

ALWAYS do the clean install of Drake 8. It seems to have serious issues with an upgrade.

Dual booting is not a problem for Mandrake. Install Win98 first. Then change your BIOS boot option to "CDROM first".Pop the install CD in and restart. Follow the easy install program.(It's easier than Windows), choose your packages for installation and you're done. Takes about 30-45 mins, tops.

FYI: When your partitions are detected, tell it you want to install on the free space of the Windows partition. This will create your dual boot. Then it'll ask you how large of a partition you want for each OS.
Once you're up and running, you'll find a mount point for your Windows partition ready and waiting for you at /mnt/windows.

:cool: Mandrake :cool:

[ 28 August 2001: Message edited by: j.harrison ]

[ravonaf]

Thanks for the quick response.

I have one more question. I have an additional HD I would like to install Mandrake to. When I do a dual boot installation how much of the linux install gets installed on my primary windows partition? I would assume it would install the bare minumum to boot to the primary partion and then I can have the main linux install loaded to my secondary HD. Is this correct?

Also I have 7.2 on cd but I do not have 8.0 yet. Is it worth the purchase/long-download to go to 8.0 or would 7.2 be fine?

Thanks

[ 28 August 2001: Message edited by: ravonaf ]

[demetrius]

The only thing written to the primary master drive is the boot loader on the MBR (assuming you are going to use Lilo or Grub to boot Linux). Set up the second hard drive as a slave drive on the primary channel and make sure when you install you dont mess with the partitions on the primary master drive and you should be all set.
In my experience Mandrake 7.2 is a solid distribution. The kernel includes the patches for USB support so it supports common USB devices. All of the security updates for packages are easilly installed, and stuff like XF86 is easily updated on its own. So unless you need the extra USB support that the 2.4.x kernel provides, or dont want to manually update some packages there is really no reason to download 8.0. Not to mention, Mandrake 8.1 is already in beta and probably wont be too long before its released so you could always install 7.2 now and learn a bit about it then decide when 8.1 is released whether its worth the time to download the newer version.