Hi All,

I'm a noob to Debian (and Linux in general), so if this is a silly question, I apologise in advance!

I have downloaded debian-testing-i386-netinst and about to burn it to CD. My questions are:

1. Will, using the installgui option, I have the option of which hard drive to mount the installation to?

2. I have 2 hard drives, hda1 being a Win*&^s drive, so I want to get it onto hdb, and have the option to dual boot..... any problems there?

3. I intend to use reiserfs for the drive. Apart from Win*&^s not being able to read it (not a problem), are there any other problems that I need to be aware of, that you have gained through experience?

I'll be in the dog-house if I mess the win*&^s drive up, so any advice really is appreciated!

Thanks

Dave the

Hi Dave,

1. Yes, you can choose where to install to.
2. No problems with dual boot. The installer will detect your exisisting Windows installation and add it to the boot menu.
3. No. Windows will just ignore it.

Have fun

Rupert

1. You do.
2. Some times there may be a problem if a boot loader will be installed outside of the first 1024 cylinders of a primary master, but if you install GRUB in the MBR, usually it will be OK.
3. Reiser is a good choice. The most stable, and very good for the volumes with many small files.
!IMPORTANT! In 3DVD Etch distro can part disks only in auto mode with a loss of all previous partitions, or use existing volumes. I don't know about network installer, but it will be better to make partition for Linux before installation.

Many thanks for the replies folks, they are appreciated! Just burnt the cd, so here goes.........!

i would like to encourage you to install via text-mode - it is very simple and uses ncurses as a ui so it is not purly text! the bit of typing you have to do, you would have to do anyway.
personally if you have any doubt and trashing the windows sys would have fatal consequences i would 1. backup the windows system [b]fully[/] or even ghost.
2. perhaps consider installing on a seperate pc for testing purposes and to get used to the installer.

following those 2 steps you would be pretty safe.