Hello to all. Ok another newbie here, and 1st time posting. I have just installed Mandrake 10.1 and after looking at my how hard drive is divided I think I have done something wrong. Can someone tell me the BKM for dividing up my HD. Should the "Home" be larger than the "VAR" and what size should the "Root, TMP and URS" be? I hope to get a quick reply, I want to be up and running correctly a.s.a.p.
One other question; Is Mandrake as good as any of the other OS? I know it installs pretty quickly.

Hello and welcome! I'm no guru, but I can answer some of your questions. In my experience, /home should be the largest partition since this is where the users should be storing their data, their mp3's, or whatever it is they're saving. As for your question about Mandrake...well, that's for you to decide. I personally use Slackware and of the distros I've tried, I like it the best. I think your choice of distros should be based on what works best for you. So, if you're happy with Mandrake, stick with it...just don't be afraid to try some others along the way.

Hey thanks for your reply, I think I need to reinstall the OS and make some changes. Is there a place where I can download a different distro to try. Now I have tried to install Gentoo with zero success, I also tried to install Fedora with the same results.
Again thanks.

Your first place to check should be http://distrowatch.com/, if you're looking for a new distro. Ultimately, every distro is perfect...for someone. You just have to find the one you like best.

Welcome to LQ sonshineman. Partitioning schemes are highly subjective, and if you ask 10 people how a given hard drive should be partitioned, I'd be willing to bet you would get 10 different answers.

As a general comment, you don't need all that much space for the distro itself, and ordinarily /home gets the lion's share of space (becuase that's where your personal data will live). Assuming you've got a 40G or larger drive, here's how I'd divvy it up. Note: this is just my own preference; as I said before, the "proper" space allocations for each partition are very, very subjective. Everyone has their own opinion, and there's no particular right or wrong answer.

swap = 256Mg
/boot = 100Mg
/ = 10G
/usr = 10G
/home = everything else

If you wanted to create /var or /tmp in separate partitions, no problem, go for it. The swap partition also has some historical controversy associated with it - back in the days where 32Mg or 64Mg was considered cutting edge, there was a rule of thumb that swap should "equal twice RAM", however, swap only gets used when the system is using all its memory, and is forced to write memory page to disk. The more RAM you have, the less likely that is, and for a typical desktop my personal suggestion would be set up a 256Mg swap space regardless of how much RAM you have. Again, the optimal swap size is a debatable point, and different people will have different answers.

Anyhow, in addition to distrowatch, I'd also suggest LQ ISO which is pretty sweet

Ok now I've done it. I went and reinstalled my copy of Mandrake and now it won't boot into the Graphical interface or desktop. After booting part way I get a Localhost login $ screen which I don't know what in the world to do when it comes up.
Also I downloaded a copy of Xandros bot when I put it in the cd-rom it wouldn't boot from the disk. Don't know what I did wrong i either case. If someone else does please drop me a line.
And thanks for all that reply to my earlier post.

Why don't you try a livecd linux distro first?

Like SLAX...

Try a few. If they all boot and work fine then you should go back and read the install documents for the distros that you've tried without luck (mandrake/xandros).

I personally like Slackware.

The slackware documents have a basis for partitioning schemes. I followed them pretty closely for my 80gb drive.

Scott

If you get to the $ command line prompt, just type
to start start the X graphical environment (eg, KDE, Gnome, or whatever your default window manager is)

If you are prompted to login before you get to the command line prompt, just enter your regular user ID and password

Hey thanks for the help. J.W.

Excellent - congrats on solving the problem sonshineman and thanks for posting back with the update.

Enjoy Linux.......

I Am New User Of Linux. I Have Turbo Linux 10 But Could Not Able To Install In My Pc.

Have you set your bios correctly (when you start up hit del)Look if you set your cdrom at first then your hard drive or your floppy and then your hard drive or floppy