How to Partition and setup Bootloader
 

I have just downloaded a copy of ProMEPIS -2005 (2.6.10).
I have a 76.69GB harddrive in my computer
I have 512mb Memory on Board
I have a 1ooomhz Intel cpu on board.


I need help on setting up the Partitions on this Drive and how to load the bootloader.I do not have a partition on this drive as of yet I del the one that was there.I would like to set this drive up so I can load MEPIS and Lindows and still have space to load other Distro on this drive at a later date.

Please Help Thanks Ozzy:) :)

Well, you are on an Intel architecture, so you are constrained to having three primary partitions and one extended with up to three (iirc) logical partitions inside it. Modern bootloaders can boot from any of these, so in principle, you could divide your hard disk up to contain five different operating systems (I'm reserving one partition as a swap partition, which you'll want).

For a bit of luxury, you might have a shared /home partition, or /boot partitions for your favourite OSes; this is not mandatory; you could have your whole OS in a single partition. However, consider that if your drive overflows, your OS will probably stop working. This is one niggle with most unix systems.

HTH,

Samsara

If you are new to partitioning,mepis comes with QTPartEd,just create some partitions and tell mepis which one you want it on.You can have one swap for all the distro's but I would stay away from sharing a home unless they are the same distro.

Sharing /home can work very nicely so long as you use different usernames on different distros. Granted, you may then have to shovel files between different users' home directories to work on the same files under different distros...

Samsara

FYI an IDE drive can have up to 64 and a SCSI 16 partitions. I have read that someone had 64 different OS's on the same PC but I do not remember if it was all on the same drive.