Reinstalling Linux
 

I had RedHat 9 a good while back but I had some stuff messing up so I uninstalled it and started using Windows again.Ive been messing around with Knoppix lately and I am really wanting to get back into Linux.

My question is, when I am installing, how do I know what partition to use?Last time I accidentally formated my entire HardDrive.Is there a way to tell which partition is Windows?Or should I just create a new one and how?


Thanks for taking the time.

Using Knoppix, you can type "fdisk -l" to see what partitions you
have on your disk. In the worst case, you have only the one windows
partition. Assuming that, and assuming further that the partition is
an ntfs partition (fdisk will tell you what kind it is), you can make room
for Linux using ntfsresize or qtparted, both included with Knoppix,
provided you have a recent version of it. qtparted should be the easier
of the two to use, and you are less likely to make a mistake if you use it. In
resizing ntfs partitions, I believe that qtparted is a front end to ntfsresize
anyway. I've used ntfsresize myself successfully (from the System Rescue CD).

Thanks for the help man! But one more quicky...... How big should I make my linux partition? Im probobly gonna only install a few applications, but how much should I have if I want all packages installed?

using RH9 that is.

Since I have a 80 gig HDD My linux partition is 40 gigs, and from there its split into different data partitions. But when I had my 10 gig HDD it was a bit tricky, especially because I used windows as a back up. So in actuality I only had about 2-3 gigs for linux, and that really sucked. But if you just want to do a base system install, it should only take about a gig, rarely I have ever used more then 1.5 gig even if the applications I use install. I am not familiar with knoppix, so I don't know if the installations procedure is any thing like, suse, or mdk. Since it sounds more commands line, then chances are that the size it going to be pretty small. So count on 1 gig at the most.

thanks for the help man. I really appreciate it!

A full install of RedHat 9 is almost 2gigs. See this.