Hi, I'm new to linux and decided to try out Mandrake as Tech-TV recommended this distro for absolute newbies. Anyway, I have a hard disk, 80 gigs, partitioned into 10 and 70. The 10 Gig is my C Drive but has only about 3 gigs left.

Should I install my 9.2 into the 70 gigs and have a dual boot system? What settings should I take note of when booting from the CD? Thanks for your time.

Welcome to a new chapter in your life - you will find it entertaining and enlightening

You came to the right place to get answers - this is a vast conpendium of knowledge shared among all of us trying to get to the next level...

The decision you need to make regarding your partitioning overlooks some basic assumptions that you are making particularly in regard to how rigid those partitions are -

One of the cool things about the installation program for Mandrake is that you get to partition your hard drive the way you want..

And 70 gig is a good deal of real estate.

You may have heard of RTFM ( Read The Freakin Manual ) and how some people new to Linux tend to take affront to those with a little more practice referring them back to mere documentation. When all they want is to make it work.

This is where the dreaded learning curve starts - making decisions about how to partition.

This site is very cool, one of the overlooked areas are the tutorials, check out http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/answers.php - in your case a solid beginning can be found.

Part of it is talking the language I guess ..

Enjoy

Settings when installing are pretty self explanatory, choose what you want, leave out what you don't. If you aren't going to be running a server, dont choose anything with servers because it will slow down your boot time (which is important to most linux users ;-) )

I'd say set ~1gb for swap, the rest for the Mandrake. You sure you dont want to just go ahead and get Mandrake 10? You can always upgrade to Mandrake 10 after you install 9.2, but just letting you know its out now :-)

Vi - Hey, be nice to him - 9.2 is a rock stable installation - 10.0 is barely public, still working out the bugs on a large scale - believe me, I know

And yes, I see that you compiled a custom 2.6 kernel .. ( I am not worthy, I am not worthy ... - being a old newb .. )

The key is to allow people to have a good experience.

p1p - Read the link and decide how you want the partitioning to go - then you will know how to proceed - stay with 9.2 until you feel comfortable with it -

10.0 has some 'oh wow' features in it - and currently some initial configuration hangups - but mainly enhancements of concepts present in 9.2

Welcome to a new chapter in your life - you will find it entertaining and enlightening

Wow! Trying out Mandrake is like being accepted into a religion or cult of some sort! Thanks for the warm welcome!

To be honest with you, I haven't bought my copy yet... and I don't have broadband to download the ISOs. I'll get that (install CDs) done very very soon now

So, there will NOT be a problem when installing into the 70 gig one, right? I'll RTFM now and hope that my 9.2 experience will be as great as you guys hype about.... And I should be able to boot into Windows without major problems, right?

Cuz the other time I tried LInux was on my Mac.. way back in 2000 on a Beige G3... it was a nightmare. But I hear there are advancements now, and installation is less painful. I'll give it a shot, and tell u how it goes

Good day now, and =) thanks for your help! I'll post questions when I bump into any

I always get my copies of the newest copy of Mandrake from cheapbytes.com - for under $10, they mail you the CDs you need and you skip the entire download, burn ISO route

Enjoy

thanks for the suggestion. Well, i live in a developing country (but trust me, we're quite modern).

there are pirated stuff available virtually anywhere. i think i can get the mandrake dvd for rm 15 (us$ 4)...photoshop 8, all games, all OS (even combo DVDs with ALL versions of windows).. CDs are usually RM 6 (US$1.50 ish) and DVDs at rm 15. Impressed?

*hope I haven't raised any American FBI or whatever flags*

Geeks lol

Anyways, 9.2 is more stable than 10.0, both installation and whehn running, the 10.0 is much faster with new kernel and KDE, but I had to go back to 9.2 to get my laptop ACPI working and touchpad. I will be the first one to try out public release version of 10.0 as soon as they land.

I am probably just as new as you, but 1 thing I gotta tell you, dont be scared, you cant break computers, just back up your work and go for it.

Good Luck!

Malaysia is very modern, and much better than England, the far east grows 10x quicker than the Westerns.

Ah.. first problem. Installed "EVERYTHING".. including server. Lastly, couldn't find my gfx driver (nvidia fx5200 by msi).... i'm using mdk 9.0 .. can't find 9.2 shit shit shit..

when boot, i see the console (ahhh....) but when i press the windows key, i get other similar consoles, but one blinking cursor option (after cycling through).. why shud I do? Ill read faqs now.