I recently bought a book, and it is very good, but it is designed for fedora, and I use mandrake. But I got to thinking after flipping through this book: Iwant fedora. Then I got on mandrake and noticed how much work I put into configuring it juuuust right. So, I have decided that I will tri-boot my system with XP on one 80 gig and mandrake and fedora and mandrake on a 40 gig, 20 gigs each (I use more windows space than linux). So, how would I go about resizing mandrake, erpartitioning, installing fedora, etc? I already have the fedora cd which came with the book.

For those of you wondering, the book is called "Linux for Non-Geeks".

Also, I want to keep using the mandrake graphical lilo.

Does mandrake use LILO or GRUB?

Anyhow, I find that dual-boot systems aren't that great, tri-boot systems would be worse. You will only ever use one because you'll configure it all up the way you like. My suggestion is to get one OS and stick with it, or dual boot with XP and ONE linux distro and you configure both to how you like it. That way you use the best of both worlds

Good point, but I'm really interested in FC, even if I only use it a few times. It is, as I have noticed, the most compatible distro around, if there's an rpm, its for fc/red hat. Also, this was an expensive book, and focuses on fc, and all the books there that looked at all good were based on fedora core.

BTW, mandrake uses a graphical lilo on mine, but it can do text lilo and grub, they are installed right now.

FC3 uses GRUB, but you can set it to not install it so you can add it manually into the LILO booter.

You might try VM Ware with a trial to install FC and test it out and if you really like it you could replace your mandrake

I think I will try installing fc because I won't use up 40 gb's in mandrake anyway, I probably won't even use 10, but i'll give it 20. But still, how do I make mandrake smaller, install fc, etc.? THis book I have comes with everything I need, so it may be better than mandrake anyway. It has one cd with Fedora, and one cd with all the programs I need to do everything in the book that isn't included in fedora, or something like that. Anyway, I like the idea of fedora and its compatibility.

I either deal with all my partitioning needs when I reformat, or I use partition magic in XP Pro, but I don't think PM can handle reiserFS so its up to you to find a program that can.

Ok, after doing research, I'm going to go with my earlier advice, I'm just going to stick with mandrake. I will probably move on to fedora and out of windoze soon, and maybe even into slack, but for now, mandrake is fine for me, it would be too much work for too little result to install fedora.

Actually, I've changed my mind. I am going to install fedora over manddrake, at least until mandrake 10.2 comes out. If I like fedora more, I'll stick with it, otherwise, I'll install mandrake 10.2. Anyway, how do I do this? By that I mean, delete Mandrake and still let my system boot up? Because lilo is on my mbr, so I'm afraid that if I take out the mandrake partitions (and leave one empty hard drive for Fedora), my computer just won't start. If it is going to be complicated, then I'll wait for mdk10.2, but if this will be almost a normal install of fedora with not too much pre-installation work, then fc here I come.

Also, how would I go about taking out the old partitions. In fact, I just need step-by-step instructions on taking mandrake out for fedora to go in. I'll be fine when I'm in the installer, but, well, I think you all know what I mean.

\BTW, if you didnt figure it out yet, I have two hard drives, one window$, and one linux.

Well I've had trouble just taking them out. The first time I had linux I did that and grub came up and got all bitchy as hell with no GUI :-P

So basically you have to clear your MBR, but I've had problems in this with windows. Its SNAFU'd my HD. So backup your stuff.

Boot from the windows XP CD
Go to the RECOVERY CONSOLE
Type fixmbr <enter>
Yes
Exit or whatever it is to quit

And when you restart it should go straight into Windows. If it gives an error, be worried. I managed to fix it when I got an error by rewriting the boot sector, but I'll deal with that if it happens.

Then you can just boot from the fedore core 3 cd and use their disk druid. It will install GRUB which is nice, so I'd suggest using that. The FC3 installer is amazingly easy. It should let you delete the mandrake partitions without trouble.

I get scared away from things easily, so I'll stick with mandrake since there probably isn't a safer way to do that. Also, II have a lot of important schoolwork in windows, so I can't risk losing that. But out of curiosity, if i just deleted mandrake and all of its stuff, and then restarted my computer, what would it do? Just hang there, explode, or ask me to push any key?

One time a long long time ago when I used Fedora core 1, it had just came out, I delete the partition it was on and restarted. It got me to a prompt where I had no clue what to do. I think it was a text version of grub that I got to :-p

It was weird. I ended up fucking up my computer trying to fix it

Pauli - please keep in mind that LQ is an all-ages website; there's no need for inappropriate language. Please consider editing your post. Thanks -- J.W.

Kids these days cuss more than I do, but okay, I'll try not to :-P

Well... when I installed Fedora Core 3 over a previous Linux install, I just booted from the install CD, then when it got to the Disk Druid setup part, I formatted and repartioned into the partitions I wanted. Haven't had any problems with that so far.