Problems Installing Suse
 

I am new to Linux. I have a Dell 9100 with Windows xp
One harddrive with 80 MEG. I FREED UP ABOUT 1OMEG WITH PARTITION MAGIC, LEAVING THE SEGMENT UNALLOCATED.
cHANGED THE BOOT SEQUENCE TO BOOT FROM CD. i AM TRYING TO LOAD SUSE 9.X ON THAT SEGMENT. lINUX COMES UP WITH NO DRIVE FOUND.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG. ANY SUGGESTIONS APPRECIATED.

SHERPAMAN

Welcome to LQ!

I really hate to burst your bubble, but the purpose of this forum is:
New to LinuxQuestions.org? Been a long time member but never made a post? Introduce yourself here.

You should contact a moderator and ask him to move this thread to the SuSE Forum.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Newbie and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Have you created a partition from the free space or is it unallocated?

i believe I created the partition using Partition Magic by resizing an existing partition creating an unallocated space on the drive.
I have read on the boards that maybe I need 2 partitions extra, one small partition for swap?? and another for the OS.

You will need a swap and a / (root) partition at the minimum. Lots more to consider, but what Mara is trying to say is that you can't install to unallocated space, you must partition that space. Your distro of choice should format that space when you install. Well, I don't know anything about SuSE, but Slackware does the formatting if you desire.

what is the best format: I have 10 G OF SPACE AVAILABLE.
WHAT format and size for the swap
what format and size for the rest.

First of all, suse can autopartition this for you at the install-fase.
Second: there is also a Suse version 10.0 downloadable: http://www.opensuse.org/

The standard size for a swap partition is 2 times larger than your ram and most people use 1 gig as swap. The rest for root.