Hi All,

Just downloaded the .iso of SuSE 8.1 and burned it to a disc as described at Linuxiso.org and am ready to go. Just need some questions answered.

Can I run the eval of SuSE 8.1 on my W2K machine with all of my partitions formatted to NTFS, or should I change partitions to FAT or FAT32?????????

Will running the eval affect any of the settings on my machine (eval says it runs completely from the disc so my settings should remain OK, but don't know)????

Nope, what you read is correct. Everything is run from the disc, no need to even have a hd in your computer.

Go have fun with it, but I don't think it will save any settings beyond a reboot??? Never actually given the SuSE LE a try, so I don't know if it gives you an option to save settings to an HD or floppy or not.

Cool

Hi MasterC,

Ran SuSE from the disc and liked what I saw. I especially liked the way it felt navigating around and the ease of how everything worked - much simpler to understand. I think this week I'll put on the full 8.1 Pro version. I'll be posting back and let you know my progress..........

partition magic 7 and 8 i think can convert ntfs to fat32.

Thank you for that, but I do not think installing to a fat32 partition is such a great idea. That is a good program to use to resize your partition's to make room for a native linux filesystem, so when you do install SuSE you have a better running system.

Cool

Hi MasterC,

So what are you saying - not to convert my partitions to FAT32?? How should the partitions be formatted?? (I have Partition Magic 7.01)

How large of a partition and what formatting should I use to run SuSE 8.1??

How large the Swap partition and what formatting??

Should I set up a file transfer partition between OS's??

Should I have any other partitions, if so, what size, what formatting??

I currently have an 80 gig HD with C@66gb, D & E are CD & DVD, F@10gb - C & F both formatted NTFS??

Any ideas on how I should go about this install??

i just brought up the ntfs to fat32 conversion so
he would be able to write to the drive from linux.
installing linux onto fat32 as loopback or umsdos
sucks. Its really slow.
most of the 1 or 2 cdrom linux distros will squeeze
into about 2 gigs or 2.5. 4 or 5 gigs would give
you plenty of play room.

Hi whansard,

Thanks, but I'm going with the full 7 disc Pro version and I think I'll need a bit more space.....

Actually a full install (If I remember) of 8.0 Pro took up ~5GB of space. This is probably a conservative number, so if you are able to shoot bigger, I would.

Here's how I'd make the space go:

Move all the data you need for XP to your "C" drive. Then shrink the C drive down to a tolerable size, you really need to decide what that is for yourself. For me, it was ~4GB, I don't run many apps, and a default install took up almost 3GB I believe, so 4 was fine for me. Then from there, I'd merge all additional space into 1 conglomerate partition. Makes for easier dividing at this point. Then, yes, I'd make a "shared" partition using a Fat32 filesystem. Oh, btw, yes I would keep C at NTFS, and just use that for windows only info/apps.

Then, after deciding how much "share" space you need, for me it was 10GB, since I use that for P2P in winbloze, it needed to be considerably large. This will become your new "D" drive.

The rest of the blank space I left unformatted, or if you want, you can format it to ext2 or whatever it uses for a linux filesystem. IF nothing is available, you can just leave it unformatted. SuSE will format it for you during the install.

From there, during the SuSE install, make sure you pick the correct drive/partition to install to. The main reason I think you should leave C formatted as NTFS is because Linux won't install to it, write to it, delete from it or whatever, without you being very aware. That way during the install, at worst you will jack up your Fat32 partiition, which now should contain no data. Anyway, I would format my linux filesystems with any of the excellent journaling linux filesystems, such as Ext3, ReiserFS or XFS amongst many others. I personally use Ext3, but that's just me.

Swap size is up to you and there are actually tons of threads on it. In fact, out of boredom one day, I sort of wrote a "how to" thread on this, so a search is your buddy on that.

Oh, and 1 more thing to sort of "ease" your mind, SuSE will use the blank space however it sees best. So however it chops up the space is going to be just fine. You shouldn't have any problems just leaving a big chunk of blank space for it to use during the install, however, if you plan on dual-distro'ing then you might need other ideas, so if this is your planned future, let us know. For now I would suggest just sticking with the 1 distro and learning from it.

Cool

Hi MasterC,

Thanks for all the great info.....

I'm going to begin working on this project this evening - I'll be posting back with my progress......

It's nice to know there are so many out there willing to help.......

Thanks again.....

You're welcome, and good luck

Cool