I have two questions:
1. How do I partiotion optimally my disk, I want to do a full install (the 7 cds) and I'm not planning to have too many documents
2. How do I find the driver of my serial ata disk?
in knoppix I can see under pci devices: 0000:00:0f RAID bus controller: VIA technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID controller (rev 80)
is this the sata controller or the raid controller

Thx

Wannes

1. What do you want to use your system for ? Server, home use, cluster node... ? What sort of environment do you want to work in ?

2. Not sure which is which, but to use SATA drives under Debian, you'll probably have to get some proprietory drivers from http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=297, or upgrade to a 2.6.3 kernel first - see http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html.

Cheers,

mj

just a home computer, I want to test debian out, I'm not a newbie to linux bot I'm not an expert, now im using mandrake 10.1 community and its rather unstable to me. The config has changed, I've found a 40GB in my drawer and debian recognizes that one so let's forget about the sata problem

wannes

First off, let me say that if you have a good cable connection, I'd do a netinstall using one of the new Sarge installers (download one from http://www.au.debian.org/devel/debian-installer), as it will be more up-to-date - Woody is stable, but (IMHO) usually best for servers rather than home use.

As for partitioning... well this can be a bit of a contentious issue, but for home use I'd use something along of the lines of:

/home 20 Gb
/ 20 Gb
/swap approx. 2 x RAM

Seriously though, you're pretty unlikely to need all that space unless you do some video editing or all night number crunching. Most of what you'll use for a home workstation will probably be on the first cd. Have a read of the Debian installation docs at www.debian.org/doc, and also http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apb.html

Good luck - Debian is a great distro (may take some getting used to, but it's well worth it !).

Cheers,

mj

I've done some reading (man pages and the internet)and partitioned it how I liked it.


Thx
Wannes