new questions
 

I'm a linux-newbie.
Could someone plz answer my questions:

1) What is a HOME partition and WHY is it
used? What are its advantages?

2) I have XP on hda & Mepis on hdb.
My brother wants to install a newer
version of XP and I'm afraid this may
cause my bootloader menu to vanish.
Is there any precaution I can take
beforehand to avoid this? If not,
what EXACTLY do I have to do to
restore the botloader menu??
Please give DETAILED, STEP-BY-STEP
instructions as I am a TOTAL newbie.

4) Can u please recommend
a nice all-rounder book/website for me
so that I can also acquire all that geeky
Unix/Linux knowhow which u guys possess,
and be able to troubleshoot things myself?

Thanking you

Take care
Cool Blue

1) See:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-...OMEDIRECTORIES

2) it will wipe the bootloader off the mbr but you can restore it. What are you using grub or lilo?

3) The best ones are:
http://www.linuxquestions.org
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org
http://www.tldp.org
http://www.google.com/linux

Now lets see

1) The home partition, some distros use this to store user settings, info in general and your documents. I say some distros cause some others don't (by default that is), such as Fedora Core 3. Advantages? Hrmmm... I don't know about that but I suppose it gives some security in case something goes awfully wrong with your linux root partition.

2) When reinstalling WinXP theres nothing you can do to prevent the bootloader from banishing (WinXP SHALL it your bootloader). Just remember to be careful when you reinstall the XPmonster, take care of the partitions, don't touch you linux partitions and you should be fine.
Now, as I said WinXP will eat your bootloader so you have to reinstall it, here are the steps:

a) Boot you computer with your Linux install disc (the first disc of your distro that is, or the only one :D )
b) At prompt type:
linux rescue
c) After some screens you should come to a bash prompt (something with a $ on it maybe), there type:
chroot /mnt/sysimage
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda
d) Reboot (just type exit as many times as necesary for the system to reboot)
e) Once you reboot from your hard drive you should see the bootloader again

3) Im too a Linux :newbie: so I got my hands in a book called (simply) Linux 2nd edition by some Petersen bloke, it was outdated but I found it useful. As for websites there is no greater wealth of knowledge than LinuxQuestions so you are on the right track here.

Hope this helps.