I want to download the trial version of SuSE 8.0 before paying money for it. I have only installed linux before from a CD (don't have a CD burner). I have a second hard drive with 3+ gigs left over. Could someone walk me thru the process? i.e., does the part of the HD I am going to use need to be pre-partioned and if so, in what format, just linux native? Can the download be placed and installed in the same place? I am going to run it with a disk bootup - but is it going to interfere with my first HD (WIN2000 and MDK 8.2)? Know this is a lot to ask but don't want to mess up my main HD. I tried Debian recently and I ended up having to re-install MDK 8.2 because somehow Debian placed files in the first HD even though it was not told to do so. Again, many thanks in advance!!

Ya know, this is a good question...

The "trial"version of Suse is (I think anyway) a bootable CDROM version, not something you can install. So I don't know if you could "emulate" a CDROM and run it that way. If I am wrong, and you are talking about doing an FTP install, then I appologize.

For the FTP install, you can actually find decent info on how to do it from www.suse.com but here's the quick and dirty:
Download a floppy.img file, rawrite it to a floppy, or dd or whatever you'd like to get the img to be created on a floppy (not simply copy the file, but place the image), and run it, and then supply the ftp site where you will get the files from.

Cool

Apparently they now have a way for that to be done in addition to the CD install. Thanks for the info. Couple of quick questions though: Will be installing it on a 2nd HD: how do I format it - Linux native? The second HD is only used as a backup so I assume there would be no problem with downloading it on one HD and then transferring it to the 2nd HD? If I understand correctly I download the floppy.img image first then go to the site and download the sections one by one? Thanks for your help.

You can install it Linux native if you'd like, lucky for you Linux understands winbloze, but not vice-versa. At least not very well. So you can format whatever filesystem you'd like, but not NTFS or QNX 4. No, shouldn't be a problem transferring to second hard drive...

Not sure which image you d/l, but like I said if you go over to suse's website, they have an excellent tutorial on the FTP install, and I would assume that the options would be the same for a local HD install (except replace the ftp site with the location on your HD). I have never done it, but this would be logical, and as a Spock man, I think logically

Good luck