I only know of Zipslack, but I'm not totally satisified with it. As far as I can figure there's no RPM support for it built in, however I could be grossly mistaken. Is there a Fat32 capable version of Mandrake, Red Hat, or something a little more user-friendly? I have Zipslack up and running with X, but I have no net support because I can't get my modem working without downloading some RPMs... Any help or info would be useful.

no decent distro is going to available without partitioning your hd. fat32 simply can't support a real linux o/s - it doesn't have enough capabilities. the only distros that will work will be the virtual ones that run primarily in RAM.

mandrake can easily install into a HUUUUUUUUUGE file inside a windows partition, as can winlinux, phatlinux and i *think* peanut linux. you'll get a noticable drop in performance tho, it should still be usable tho. the file can be treated as a pretend file system, with a pretend FAT and such like. Linux doesn't use FAT32 because, as far as file systems go, it's complete crap.

Suse have the 'LiveEval' thing for download. It's a 55Mb-ish ISO file. Installs a couple of huge files onto your C drive (I don't know if you can change the drive letter it installs to) to work. It's crap, though.

Basically, if you have enough space to warrant putting on one of these non-partitioned distros, you've got enough space to partition your harddisk and put in a proper one, you'd just need to bite the bullet, squeeze (defrag) your harddisk and partition. It is actually quite painless.

I'm just trying to learn some basic Linux so I'm not totally lost later on down the road... The HD on the dinosaur that I'm running right now only has 4gb, and I need to keep window$ it's apps. Right now I think that Window$ and all the other stuff I got on here takes up at least 2gigs...I figure i need an additional .5 gigs just for safety on the window$ partition... so, I think the only option is to use what I got then... Zipslack runs decently enough, it runs faster than Win98 does. If I was to go and re-partition would I have to format the entire C drive??

if you wanted to do that, the safest way to do it is to get partition magic to split up your C drive into two separate partitions so then from there you can install linux on its own drive..

No.

Windows is notoriously bad at housekeeping its harddisks (or partitions), so you'd need to defrag your C drive, and then use something like partition magic to split it.

No.

Windows is notoriously bad at housekeeping its harddisks (or partitions), so you'd need to defrag your C drive, and then use something like partition magic to split it.

ARG! Windows is terrible at harddrive management... I gotta defrag at least once every 2 weeks... it's pitiful. Where can I get this "magical" partition magic?
And, would anyone kindly send me a copy of either Red Hat, Mandrake 8.1 or Slackware 8.0? I would pay the costs for s&h plus the cost of blanks if anyone would be so generous.

about Dragon Linux which installs on a FAT32 partition. Who knows though. I know how it is, though. I recently went from a 2.1 gig drive to 81 gig. I feel like I should create arbitrarily large files just to tame the howling wasteland.

Ive never run the Windows Virtual server for VMWare, but im pretty sure its possible to install a whole OS Without partitioning.
VMWare will emulate linux within windows, like such: http://eloria.homeUNIX.net/vmware.gif but vise-versa.
This requires much ram, and is a resource hog, but windows runs perfectly fast within my redhat OS

vmware is only a virtual machine, and not in the slightest bit related to a linux distribution.

Yes but its possible to very easily install a linux distro, onto a running virtual machine. without partitioning your hard drive. Isn't that a way of installing linux without partitioning your hard drive?, i think that was his question. and would be usefull for someone who is : "just trying to learn some basic Linux so I'm not totally lost later on down the road"

well, i don't know if it's possible, if you say it is, i guess i'll take your word for it. But as a solution, it's not a nice one i don't think, as the VM would use up so many resources, and it's *another* thing to go wrong along the way. there's nothing wrong with just using Mandrake. I suppose there's the possibility of being able to use windows for net access with linux in a vm tho...

Interesting converstation. I'm thinking of getting another HD and either mandrake or red hat. Since I'm kinda having a little bit of a space problem with 2 OSes on this tiny HD. I know that Linux isn't meant to run on fat32, but honestly it runs quite a bit better than Win98. So, when I get the $$ I won't have a "lame" version on Linux to learn on, althought I've learned tons already.