installation
 

hi all!
i have 98 n xp with dual boot option. i want to have linux n xp n remove the 98. 98 is onsay c: n xp on d:

plz help.

I'm newbie too, but I made a dual boot system out of my box without any problems I just told the linux installer to format the partition where I wanted Linux to be as "ext2" and mounted it to "/". Then another partiotion of around 1GB I formatted as "swap" and is mounted as swap automatically. That was pretty much it, but as I said, I'm newbie too, so maybe someone tells you about the "hidden dangers".

I did it with SuSE first, didn't like it too much so went for Fedora, both times worked like a charme. Best is of course if your 98 and your XP are in different disks, not just different partitions.

Re: installation
 

c:, d:, etc. is not a good notation because it doesn't necesarilly sais something about your hard disk partition configuration. I will assume c: is a primary partition on your single IDE1 master HDD, and d: a second partition within the same HDD. But they could also be a single partition each in two different HDDs. If it's this last one the right choice than it's easier to configure.

I will also assume your distribution of choice has a decent installation routine that lets you configure your partitioning, because you'll need to create at least two partitions in the area where win98 is right now. I could sugest you to use mandrake. Is great for newbies as well as for experienced users, has a very good installation program, often regarded as one of the bests for linux, and certainly much more intuitive and less rebooting than any windows intallation.

You should at least configure two partitions. One for files and the other one as a swap partition for virtual memory handling. I think there is a way to have the virtual memory as a file inside the linux filesystem, just like windows does, but I don't know how to configure linux that way, and anyway, it's less eficient.

I'm not 100% sure right now if the following can be done. You should make an extended partition in the area that c: is, e.g., the first partition. Then inside two partitions. The first one with the whole space minus 100MB or 200MB, or whatwever size you want your virtual memory space to be. The other one (the swap partition) with this 100 or 200 MB you left out of the first one. Be sure to configure the first partition to be mounted on /

This is the simplest configuration. If you finally decide to use mandrake I could help you further with a better and more complex configuration, and how to achieve it using the mandrake partition manager available during installation.

I suppose anyway that for any distribution you choose (including mandrake), there is plenty of people here that can help, specially in the forum of your distribution of choice, whatever that might be.