So, I currently dual boot on a single hard disc using "eckspee" and mandrake 9.1

I have partitioned off a decent sized "chunk" of disc to install debian (when the dvd arrives), and what I would like to know is

1) Will it automatically (or with little assistance) see the empty (well only ext2 formatted) section of my hard drive ?

2) Will it detect the other hardware in the same (or similar) way as mandrake ?

3) Will it just "deposit" the correct info into my current bootloader (lilo) so I can just click it and go, or will I have to manually config the lilo so it also has the debian option ?


regards

John

Hiya bigjohn - ironic you should post this right now - I'm actually in Debian now - to my amazement.

As far as I recall, it picked up the partitions or was easily told.

I don't know about Mandrake - it seems to have done okay, though.

Not for me - I had to add it to my Slack lilo.conf and I dumped a copy of the kernel in the /boot directory of my Slack partition.

But I'm not the best guide - I installed this days or weeks ago and thought it was a disaster. I got sick of my Slack problems so went looking for new problems and it turns out, with a little tinkering, it works! So my recipe was: install and give up. Wait a week or so and make it actually boot. Wait another week or so and actually configure X and come here and post about it.

1) Yes, any Linux install will see an ext2 partition.
2) No, hardware detection and configuration will have to be done by you. I suggest opening your case and identifying every component in your PC....chipset, processor, pci cards, video, sound, isa cards, etc...also get your Horiz and Vert refresh rates for your monitor. You can probably also get all this (mo' easier) by studying the output from "dmesg" in Mandrake.
3) If I were you I'd choose not to install a bootloader, and just edit lilo.conf to include the new Debian kernel.

Check out lspci -vvv and the kernel log for your hardware info.
It will detect most hardware and load the modules for it.If you got newer harware pass the option bf2.4 at the boot prompt.That will give you a 2.4.18 kernel - not that it would help with my box.

So OK,
If I do dmesg and lspci -v (though I don't know if I can print from a terminal - I've never tried) that should give me most of the stuff that I would need to know to config the hardware manually?

I know from checking stuff out that for the first attempt, I will be better off getting it (the debian) in disc form (not expensive), even though one of the guys at the LUG went on about network installs - I just mega confused with all that jigdo s**t. So the dvd version is favourite.

And while I will probably order the disc today or tomorrow, it won't get installed on arrival, as at the moment I'm suffering from "f*****g linux, b*****d app's and screw the whole thing" syndrome (trying to work out the best/easiest way to learn some html and have just uninstalled quanta/bluefish - the dvd is messing around - no visible damage, just 33 degree heat, and trying to work out what I actually would need to download is just stressing me out - nothing unusual in that, it's just good old linux!).

so thanks for the tips, I'll go and try to print the output.

regards

John

just use these 6 floppies. It's nice...

http://www.debian.org/debian/dists/s...es-1.44/bf2.4/