Believe it or not I am using a discussion board for the first time. Bought C. Negus' Fedora Core 2 and thought I studied to my best extent. Lost my win2kpro.....want it gone eventually, but I have online classes that I must attend and I can't quite grasp this wonderful OS. Hardware guru (not boasting please!) Is there someone out there that can help me grow? Where are my hard disks...I installed on an empty hdb but don't understand how to manipulate the software. More than willing to shut up and learn from anyone who would be kind enough to invest some time. Disabled, my time is my own, and I desperately want to join this OS of the future . Any takers? Thanks in advance.

what exactly do you want to know about manipulate the software do you mean like programing or just day to day stuff..

and about the hard disk that is like so

the master hardrive is hda (you probable already know that but I thought I would just say so)
now your second is hdb

now unlike Windows it does not say C: or D: it is hda hdb and so on

here is the layout of most protons

/boot this is usually between 10 to 100 I think 10 is more the enuf
/swap this can very greatly it is usually dubble the ram that you have
/ and of course this is your main hdrive where every thing is

now if you can not open win well that you have to mount

/mount hda /mnt/win
this is how i did mine
then I went into /etc/fstab use vi to do it

etc/# vi fstab

put this right by the other that are like it
dev/hda1 /mnt/win ntfs ro,uid=username 0 0

you may need to mkdir for win

hope this helps if not give more details

Thanks so much for your reply. in what seems to be a habit for me, i trashed something and am currently having to pull a full recovery. Got backups, hate this process. Your info helped but alas was too late. I will get back to you with more detailed questions ASAP. I need to study the terminal commands and syntax more. I was looking for something like my computer or control panel from the gnome desktop. I've got to be more open minded. Again, sincere thanks and I'll post again after reloads. jry

I'm learning too

hda is your primary IDE and hdb is the secondary IDE

your HD will get divided into various partitions hda1, hda2, hda3 and so on - so will the hdb but usually all you have on the secondary IDE is your CD-ROM , this will be hdb1.

If you run a dual boot system, hda1 will be Win or MS-DOS, apparently DOS can't run unless it has the early cylinders on the HD.

hda2, will be your LinuxOS and hda3 will be your Linux Swap partition.

I got Partition Magic (7.0) and it seems to do a reliable job of partitioning the fixed disk without osterizing windows. However, I'm not so happy about Boot Magic, I've had several Linux failures using it.

There is a Linux program, FIPS20 (I believe) that both partitions and provides a dual boot.

I got my system "working" (still work in progress) just by simply downloading several floppy disks worth of files from Debian as follows:

1) Fips20
2) Debian LILO (Linux Loader)
3) Rescue.bin
4) Root.bin
5) Driver1 thru 4 .bin
6) A bunch of iddy-bitty files like : rawrite, kernel, loadlin, install, setlang, deboot.

I also downloaded "woody-i386-1.iso", which is about 190 Mbytes of 'stuff'

It's a real learning curve and this only gets you a Command Line system. You'll need to get Xwindows from XFree86.org and after that a 'desktop' such as Gnome or kde.

Good Luck!

P.S. look for my Newbie questions, I'm not far ahead of you. G