hello,

Can someone give me deep details on how to setup a dual boot im running windows 98 with a 12gig hard drive thanks..

If you have two drives, pop in the linux CD and select the second drive as the install drive. Put grub in the Master Boot Record of the first drive. Viola!

If you have one drive, I'd do the following:
1) Defrag Windows 98 (you might have to turn off the virtual memory if you have unmovable files)
2) Download GParted LiveCD and burn as disc image
3) Insert GParted Live CD and reboot.
4) Shrink Windows 98 partition to your desired size (a fully loaded heavy desktop will be like 4GB total, a base Debian install is like 400MB -- no gui).
5) Create swap partition 2x RAM (512MB Max)
6) Create / partition (and if you want a separate /home partition)
7a) reboot into Windows just to make sure you didn't hose anything
7b) reboot into your distro's install CD
8) Go through installation, select partition manually. Choose the new /swap partition for swap, /home for /home, and / for /...
9) Put lilo/grub into Master Boot Record (MBR)
10) finish install and enjoy!

Many people will tell you that you can just use the distro's partition manager to do most of what I did above. I just like to do it separately so that I can reboot into Windows and get a warm fuzzy that I didn't hose anything. Do which ever you're more comfortable with.

ok thanks im gonna try it now

ok after i have created the second partition can i just boot from the linux cd and install because i dont have a burner

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Did you resize the 98 partition or did you already have free space?

You should be able to reboot into the install CD at any point you want. Just be careful not to delete /dev/hda1 which is probably your Windows partition.

well my system alredy had a second partition of 2240mb i was just gonna use that for linux

Yeah, go for it. When it asks, just choose "use free space at end of drive". What distro are you installing? 2.2GB may not be enough for a heavy distro like Fedora or Suse using the default installations.

could you tell me how to resize my win98 partition???

You'll need either a GParted Live CD (or I suppose any Live CD will work) or buy a copy of something like Partition Magic on Windows.

Otherwise, you can try to just install and see if the distro partition tool can resize the partition during install. Just be sure to defragment it before you try this.