First time installing Linux, Mandriva x_86 64.

I just resized my NTFS file system, and im now at teh screen which asks me the mount point.

Is this arbitrary?

If not, what do put here?

Can someone please stick with me as i go along this installation, i dont want to ruin my comp, but I want linux!

Thank you for your help,

Sean

(ill prob have a lot of posts following this one)

Mount points are 'tags' that indicate how a certain partition is mounted to the directory tree. To give you an idea, your linux install will have a directory structure that looks something like this:

/ (called 'root')
|-/bin
|-/boot
|-/dev
|-/etc
|-/home

etcetera...

When you create partitions you have to tell the installation guide where you'd like to mount this partition in the tree. You'll need at least a '/ ' (root) partition. It doesn't really matter which partition you use for this purpose as long as it has enough space (which is true for any partition you make): other useful aprtitions to make are:

/home (This is where your personal settings and files would go. If you make a sepertae /home partition and really mess up your system these files are easily 'salvaged')

/boot (If you place this partition at the beginning of the disk, wihtin the infamous 1024 cylinder range you should be able to boot linux even if there were restrictions of that type in your bios.)

There are other mount points that can be assigned to their seperate partitions, but for now this is more than enough.

Finally you'll also need to set up a SWAP partition. This is used by linux to place the bits and pieces it needs to function (part of its active memory) but can't allocate to RAM because that's neede by other processes - Theoretically you shouldn't need if if you have a really humongous amount of RAM, but linux is famous for making very good use of every bit of memory space you give it to make operations as smooth as possible.

Your installation process will probably suggest several mount points and inform you it cannot install if you don't make a "/" partition or that you could have problems without a SWAP partition (typically 2x the size of your ram, but for a normal home user more than 1GB is a waste)

What else can I say? You just ask if it's still not clear.