First of all I just wanted to say I hope this is in the proper forum but since I am a complete newbie I figured this was the place for me and when I say complete newbie I mean I have never installed, used, or seen being used any form of linux in my life so you can say I am as new as they get, anyway enough with the bio lets get to the questions shall we.

The only thing I do know about linux is which distro I have decided to install and that being the new Mandriva 2005 Ed. but that is pretty much where my knowledge stops and my first question starts which is which version (i586 or x86_64) should I be downloading ? I know to answer that question you will need to know what processor I am using so I will devulge that information now.


Processor: Intel Pentium M Dothon running at 1.86Ghz on an Acer Travelmate 8100 series (laptop)


From what I have read it's an x86 processor so I downloaded the x86_64 version just incase but it only seems to be 700mb for the total download the i586 version is over 2Gig so not sure if I downloaded the full thing or just part of it or even if it's the correct version I should be downloading in the first place so any help there would be nice as I cannot really progress very far without actually downloading and installing it which brings me to my next question.

I currently have WinXP Pro (sp2) installed on my system which is on a single partition and I do not want to reformat the drive in order to install mandriva on it so my question is if I use a program like partition magic to make a new partiton on my drive will I be able to install mandriva on that new partition without interfearing with my existing XP partiton ?

And if so what size of partiton should I be creating (some palces say 3gb is normal) but is that all I will ever need for mandriva or should I make it bigger ?


And finally (for now that is) what file system should I format the new partition to (Fat16/32, NTFS, Neither) ?

Thanks for your time and replies in advance and if you are feeling overly generous today and would like to throw some tips or tricks my way that would be great as well.

Cheers,
Dave

First you want the i586 download (not sure how Mandriva breaks up packages on cd's though)
x86_64 is for AMD64/Opteron & P4 w/ EMT64

Second yes, all you need to do is set a some open space for linux to reside on.

3gb is fine if you never want to save anything or add anything to it, other words make it larger

No formatting is necessary your linux installer will format it with Ext2, Ext3 or ReiserFS all native linux file systems

Tips & tricks : Read. Google. and Patience.

Ok, you need to download the i686, if all they have is i586, that will be fine. i686 is pentium class and above(above pentium pro, i believe), i586 is some of the older amd's and pentium pro, etc.
As for partitions, it depends on how big ur hard drive is. I would give it some space to grow as well. You can still write to this partition from windows to, but the reverse may not be the same. I am not sure if Mandriva has ntfs write support. Create a new partition with whatever utility, and the mandriva install should take care of the rest. I believe it is pretty newbie friendly and doesn't ask a lot of questions.

Thanks for the quick replies I am sure I will have alot more questions as time goes on. I am glad I don't have to reformat the drive so that saves me some time. As far as I know there is no 686 version so I guess 586 will have to do and I have a 100GB drive (pretty rare for a laptop to come standard with that much space but I won't complain) anyway thx again for the replies.

Cheers,
Dave

nosix,

how have you fared with mandriva on that laptop?

i've been trying to get ubuntu running on it and i've been having headaches with it's ACPI system.

I'm somewhat a newbie myself so i'd be interested to hear whether you've had as much 'fun' as me with the DSDT tables etc....

cheers