Hallo all,

on my old laptop currently there are two os, win2k and suse10.1, both of which are on one common hard disk. at the beginning of the startup, i could choose which operating system to use. Due to a problem with my pcmcia card on suse10.1, I'd like to turn to Debian. I've downloaded the minimum bootable image, i386, and burned a cd.

Before installing this version, I have to confirm the following issue:
If on win2k I use Magicpartition to leave the partition assigned for suse unused, and go to this version of Debian, will this installation cd automatically test the partition for win2k, and offer options for win2k and debian during the startup like what suse10.1 has done?

thanx in advance, win2s

The debian install will not automatically do anything. It is very much a manual process. You have to specify which partitions it will install on and what filesystems they will be formatted with. If you leave your Win2K partition alone, debian won't touch it. The catch is how the MBR will be configured. Usually a Dual Boot uses lilo or grub although i've seen NTLDR implementation as a boot manager. If your using the NTLDR as the boot manager, then you'll need to backup all the essential boot files and replace them once debian installs to the MBR.

I wouldn't worry about partition magic. Those types of programs tended to cause more problems when I'd use them. Every distro I've played with has been able to outperform any partitioning tool I've tried.

-- EDIT --

Oh yeah, Welcome to the Debian crowd.