Hello everyone,

I am Freshman in the world of Linux. i have got Redhat 9.0 3CD's to install on my HP Pavilion N5440 Notebook. My Notebook is already running on the Windows XP system. i have 20GB hard drive with NO PARTITION on it. type of the Hard-drive is FAT32.
my question is very simple. i think to Install Redhat 9.0 i have to have partition on the hard disk. since i dont have one i have to manually create the partition. i do not want to re-install XP and Format my Hard disk, neither i want to buy any expensive software utility to partition the hard drive.
* how do i go about installing Redhat 9.0 on my notebook?
* how many partion do i need to install Redhat 9.0?
* is it true that if i install Mandrake 9.1 then i do not have to partition my hard disk but installation of Mandrake it self will take care of it???
* please send me any useful information or any source on the web where i can look of detail explanation.

Thank you very much in advance. your advice will help me lot to get in to the linux user club!! and day will come when we all will say to Mr. Gates.

Sincerely,
Shalin

hmm
redhat installation can partition your harddisk automatically just boot from cd and choose automatic partition in the setup process

I have tried that. but it gives me some error like could not partition!!
(suggestion: because of not enough space )

BUT I DO HAVE MORE THEN 10GB OF FREE SPACE!!!

ok..

well, normally for newbies I recommend clearing off their hard drives and leaving the drive as "unallocated"
this way red hat 9 (or usually) whatever distro you choose can automatically partition.

usually you will have a boot, swap, and root partition, and sometimes home depending on how you set it up - if you let the distro do it for you, it usually does it the above mentioned way.

If you want only red hat on your system and nothing else and you already have a fat32 partition on it then you would be advised to delete it and leave that space as "unallocated" as I stated earlier, then you can pop in your red hat cd1 and off you go.

If you already have XP on your drive and you want to add linux, then you need to resize the drive (if you only have one). If you have two hard drives then you need to set up the second one as unallocated.

So do you have one drive or two?
Do you want only red hat or a dual boot?

hi there!!
i have windows XP already installed and i would like to install Redhat 9.0 in dual boot. my hard drive is FAT32 20G without any partition as of today. so how do i go about installing linux on my system? i tired automatic partition as a part of linux installation but it throws some error. my guess is i have to make partition before i can install!!?? do you have any wirtten guidance or any free/cheap utility for partitioning hard drive?

please help.
Thanks

I am running XP with RH9 also.

You need to get hold of a program like Parition Magic, and create unallocated space on your hard drive.

Then, boot from the 1st RH disk, and it should find that new space and install into it. Make it more than 4gb's tho, IMO.

The Website For Partition Magic