simple linux question
 

im downloading mandrake 9.2 right now, and am planning on installing it on my computer over the weekend. Im going to either install it on my primary drive, the one with xp pro on it, or on my backup hard drve, with my mp3's, doc's, etc. i know nothing about linux watsoever, but really want to learn, but i have a few questions.

1. can linux be installed on a drive already with windows?
2. does it have to be on a diff partitin if its on the sae physical drive?
3. is it possible to uninstall all traces of the os at a later time without
having to reformat?
4. whats the minimum space required to install it?

not sure if this is the right location, if not plz move it.

thanks

hi maybbach, welcome to lq.

1. yes
2. yes
3. if you mean all partitions,yes, if you mean just the linux partition, no.
4. not sure, but, the space will depend on the packages you plan to install.

hope that clears some things up for you.
good luck.

1 and 2 yes GNU/Linux can be installed on a drive with m$ windoze, but i does require its own partition. On the first Mandrake cd, in a directory called dostools (or something like that) there should be a program to cut the windoze partition in two, allowing you to reformat number 2, and install GNU/Linux on the space. The the README file that is it the directory.

3 it is posible to remove GNU/Linux without having to reformat the partion with m$ windoze if you use the method described above. However you will need to reformat the GNU/Linux drivel.

4 That depends on what packages you install. But 1.5-2 GB should be enough to install it, but you will need more space to your personal data (including also programs downloaded from the internet) I would not go below say 5-6 GB. But that ofcause depends on your HD (if you only have 10GB you will proberly not spend half or more of the drive using GNU/Linux).
You could also want a swap partion (equalent of a swap file in m$ windows, but it most be on its own partion) of, say, 512 MB or so depending of the ram (if you are on of those lucky persons with 1 or even 3 GB of ram, don't make a swap partion) and of the disk space.

Welcome to the free world.
[edit]You will see people come up with the same anserws often, because niether of the people trying to help you knows, that someone else is writing an answer as well[/edit]

I would recommend putting the linux loader on the mbr of the second drive, or on your root partition. Google search with the terms 'NT Lilo Boot Howto' for instructions on how to use the Windows NT loader to boot into linux. This works best for XP with NTFS file system on the first drive.

Relpy to simple linux question
 

maybbach,

In response to your question:

1: Yes
2: Yes
3: I have no idea...
4: I can look it up real quick.

That's all the help that I can give you except for saying that I tried Mandrake and I liked how it ran. :-)


Kyle

thanks for the reply everyone i really appreciate it. a couple ppl told me how good unix was so thats why im trying it out. my friend hooked me up so i could ssh into his system to familiarize myself with the os. he said it was better than windows. when i ssh'ed in, it was command line, i was like wtf? i grabbed a book from my school library to familiariz myself with some of the commands, and it became less appealing to me. someone said learining unix made more sense than windows, but it wasnt makin sense for me. i just couldnt understand how someone could get excited over a command prompt. until i looked in a old maximum pc mag, i didnt think unix/linux had a gui. basically im a little biased in my opinion of this new os because of that, but im open minded and hopefully mandrake will change my mind about it. im gonna buy a book tomorrow on mandrake 9.2 so i can learn about the gui, then the command line (prolly going at it in reverse but oh well), so if anyone got any recommendations of a good book plz share, thanks.

Mandrake do have a gui, so you don't have to use the commandline. The only reason ssh uses the commandline, is that unless you run it over a home network (100mb/s or gigabit) it is to slow to give a good response time. However ssh do allow a client to use the gui on the server.

Without XF86 installed on your computer, you couldn't use X-windows forwarding. If you were logged into your friends computer using linux, you could run a program on your computer and have the program gui show up on your desktop. This is what X-Windows was designed for, because at the time, the university had many terminals tied into a large mainfraim.

Mandrake will do all the partitioning during the install. Although you can, you don't need to go into dosutils to do this, unless you are familiar with the command line, and know exactly how to do the partitioning and all that.

Linux uses a vastly different file system than any version of windows, so yes, it needs its own partition, though everything is a bit easier if you have a separate drive to use (I used a cheap used 3 gig drive when I first installed Mandrake 9.0. It did well.)

Once a drive has been partitioned and formatted to a Linux file system, you must reformat to a windows file system if you intend to reuse the partition in windows. (Windows cannot read or write to a Linux file system, but Linux can read/write to all Windows file systems except NTFS for Windows 2000 or XP. This will most likely change fairly soon, for Linux. It is unlikely to ever change for Windows, beyond M$ trying to create a file system that Linux cannot read or write.)

The minimum space for a complete Linux system is about 50 megabytes for Damn Small Linux. This can go up to as much as 6 gig or more for some distributions, if you choose to install everything. Add to that enough extra space for whatever data types you expect to use. (Text files will fit on less space than word processing documents, spreadsheets take up more, because they have graphics, graphics (photos and such can take up a lot of space, and audio/video needs the most.)

I hope this helps to clear things up. Good luck!:cool: