I have 2 LiveCD's, Knoppix and Kanotix, and am thinking of a minimal install of Debian - Sarge. Kanotix has worked better than Knoppix at detecting my hardware, so that's the one I'm using. I can only spare 1-1.5 GB (ideally 1GB) on my hard drive for Linux. I know Knoppix recommends twice that for a HDD install.

Configuring Debian-based LiveCD's:
Neither Knoppix or Kanotix supports my monitor properly. I know I need to edit Xfree86.conf, but since they're LiveCD's, can I edit the file, save it to a Linux partition on my hard drive, and get it to run? I've just been running the LiveCD's with the HDD full of Windows partitions so far.

Where can I get more info on WINE? It sounds interesting to have the ability to run Windows programs in Linux, but I don't know how to get it to work, or even if the program needs to be on a Linux partition (i.e, can I run Half Life 2 straight from my Windows partition?).

Partitioning and Installing Debian itself:
Can I fit a basic Debian install with KDE on a 1GB partition? I'm thinking of starting with a browser/email (Mozilla Suite), word processor (??????), and KDE, and if I have space, build up from there.

If there's a Windows-y window manager that's lighter than KDE, let me know. I have to admit, the more GUI tools available, the better.

Where can I find info on the net install?

Boot loaders: If I install to the hard drive, any recommendations on which is best with Debian and Windows 98 SE? I've heard of grub and lilo, and my copy of PartitionMagic 6.0 comes with BootMagic. The only problem I see with BootMagic is that Linux's filesystem has been updated since my version of PartitionMagic has been released - Windows 98 support is fine though.

I would suggest getting the hsnyc and vsync rates for the monitor either from your manual or the manufacturer's website. These can be entered during the configuration section if you install

Wine is not all that great but according to this article it is possible


I would say the minimum is about 4GB so the answer is no. If you did an install on 1GB there would probably be no room for you to do anything. You also need a swap partition of roughly twice the size of your memory but I would max it at about 300MB

Yes there are fairly light ones available like wmaker

You will find the iso file and info here

grub is my preference but you could use either of them but they do require some study. I have used BootMagic and it worked fine with ext2 file system but probably wouldn't work with ext3 which what I would advise you to use because if the system shuts down suddenly it is easy to recover from whilst ext2 can be corrupted fairly easily.

Good info on several points. I guess I wasn't clear on one question though. I did search earlier and figured out what changes I need to get my monitor to work. It's APPLYING those changes on a LiveCD I'm having trouble with. If I change a setting, it goes back to the default the next time it boots up because nothing gets saved from session to session.

I checked out the Debian installer site and read some of the linked articles.

It sounds like a 400MB install of Sarge is possible:
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/...6/ch02s05.html
The next question is how to get this install and add only KDE to it - I see how to add KDE and Gnome both so far, but I don't need Gnome. It's the Windows taskbar, systray, and control panel that I like the best in Windows 9x, and KDE has something similar - wmaker is missing the Windows-like taskbar with text-and-images buttons. Otherwise it looked ok. I realize that I'm going to have to free up a little more hard drive space - 1.5 GB or so. Not sure how much more I can do.

I have a Debian install on one of my boxes that is in a 2GB partition which my young son uses and it is a bit cramped at about 80%. I have not deleted the archives and that would free about 500MB. Total packages for a base install is around 500MB and uncompressed is about 750MB so 1GB would be very tight.
You can install only kde if you wish by installing xserver-xfree86 x-windows-system kde & kdm. This is the beauty of Debian. You can install only what you want and apt-get will solve all the dependencies for you. kde is similar to '98 in many respects. I much prefer it to Gnome, not that I have used Gnome very much - its just never got my attention.

I tried to free more space, including getting rid of old games that I haven't played in a while, and I got 3-3.5 GB not including enough space in Windows to burn a full CD. And getting rid of Cygwin, which I've been using up to this point, may free even more space.

You're right about the beauty of Debian. That's what drew me to it.