Apologies for the lamo question ... but I couldn't find this answer on the mandrake site.

Do I have to have all 3 isos in order to get Mandrake running? I'm sure there are some prgorams etc on the 2nd and 3rd, but I jsut want to get it running and check it out, before I go through another 6 hours of downloading

What's on each disk?

Thanks

Frizzo

If you want to just see what mandrake is like i would suggest you get MandrakeMove. Its mandrake that will run from a cd like knoppix. You don't have to load anything just configure your machine to boot from cd and it will take off when you reboot. There is no install. Then if you like what you see you can download the iso's and install.

PDR60

Great advice PDR60.

In theory, you could probably get enough from only CD1 to see Mandrake, but I bet the experience would just piss you off

If you use just Mandrakemove, it'll give you a pretty good feel for what Mandrake is all about, but just remember that you ARE running it off CD, and some things will be different (generally worse) then a full HD instalation (speed, program load times, variety of programs, customization, etc). But then again, if all you want is a sample, give it a shot! I've introduced a bunch of people (well ok.... not a "bunch"... only 4 ) this way, and everyone seemed impressed.

mandrakemove sounds good, but it doesn't work on windows does it?

that's the key -- I'm emigrating... and have plenty of friends who would like to check it out, but they also are on wondows.

Well... Linux (and therefore Mandrake) are operating systems... just like Windows is. So to say it doesn't work in Windows doesn't really make any sense. It is a REPLACEMENT for windows.

right, i was under the impression that mandrakemove could function as a good demo to try it out.

no worries, i downloaded all 3 isos and am burning them now....


but that would be cool if mandrakemove did work under windows, as a demo.

MandrakeMove is a bootable cdrom that will allow you to run Mandrake from the cdrom. It won't install anything but it will run just like the installed version for the most part. It does however depend on the cdrom for speed. The installed version will be much faster, but MandrakeMove will give you the ability to check out the distro without actually installing anything to your harddrive.

Knoppix is a nice way to experience Linux. It is a bootable cdrom. It is loaded with useful utilities and pretty straight forward. It will have most machines up and running in aless than five minutes, with out changing (or needing) another OS that might be installed on the system. I use Knoppix as a quick troubleshooting tool for all kinds of hardware, network issues. It also provides a third boot OS on my laptop. If you use it with a flashdisk you can even save settings and home directy info!

ok thanks for all the quick info. i have some more questions!

im partitioning my disk right now with partition magic--

40gig total ...

15gigs for xp, ntfs
10gigs for linux
15 gig for data, sharable by both oses

1) i'm sure 10gig is plenty for mandrake, yes??

2) does the data have to be in ntfs or should i use fat32? my newbie impression is that mandrake can read/write from both, but not all linuxes can. is this correct? if so then i should probably use fat32, yea? any big reason to use ntfs anyway? it's just a laptop, nothing major. but i'd like to have flexibility to try other linuxes if necessary

if things go smooth then i can carve pieces away from xp and give to mandrake if necessary. hopefully scrap it altogether.

it took me forever just to get the windows sticker off my new laptop

thanks again

by the way, i have a new challenge which i posted here (cant boot to the mandrake cd, and i have no floppy drive), if anyone can help!

http://linuxquestions.org/questions/...hreadid=158781

I dual boot my laptop (don't use xp anymore but its still there). I set up my 40 gig as follows.
5gig for xp in NTFS
5 gig for Mandrake in ext3
30 gig for data in fat32

This allows me to read/write data from either OS to the fat 32 partition. Been working flawlessly since install.

If you need help getting going just follow the how to on my web site. www.linuxloader.com