Installing Mandrake!!?? Some questions!
 

Hi there,
Im in the process of downloading mandrake 9.1 , i had a bash at knoppix and liked it so decided to install a proper linux operating system to see if i could cope with it :)

Anyway, before i start installing it i have a few questions that are not described in the help files on the site to clearly.

Windows is on C I have some extra program files on D so i would like to install linux on a spare partition E. Is this quite simple to do??

Also, I remember someone saying that a boot loader would be installed, Is there a way so that there is just a brief pause to choose booting into linux before it boots into xp so that there is not a greater amount of time added on to my reboot time?

Thanks!

hehe be VERY CAREFUL.... sure you ain't got another hdd drive to play around with ? Drive E should be unformatted, and when u install Linux it will ask you where to put it, and hopefully u can see the unformatted hdd space.

You may also want to check the newsgroups and linux questions, the answers are out there, its just that no-one wants to compile them :-)

Theres also your local linux user group which will be happy to help out and the Mandrake club, but that one, I belive, costs.

Wont be a problem, the installer should pick them up and ask you where to install, however it will use *NIX naming conventions based off the position of the drive and the bus its on - HDA0, HDB1 and so on, this is all well documented however.

As I recall, Drake uses GRUB, this will pick up your windows install without difficulty, and as long as you install it to the right location (which should be the default, I use SuSE, Debian and NetBSD) you will just need to open the /boot/grub file and edit the delay.

Welcome to (as one of my lecturers put it) a MAN'S operating system :-)

Regards,

Ben

As far as i know you wont be able to boot directly into linux if you put it on E, because the loader needs to be in the 1st 1024 sectors (been a while since i installed from fresh), however you can use a boot disk (floppy) to load straight in.

Also, be careful selecting the drive, Linux doesnt call it E: but more likely to be HDA1 for C, HDA2... so think it through before you install, if you have 3 drive letters but linux gives you 4 options, choose the last, the 1st is probably the boot loader section...

Also, Linux cannot WRITE to NTFS drives properly, so if you use NT/2000/XP you're likely to have that disk format, just remember if you open up a file on those drives, not to save it there, make yourself a fat32 drive for file crossovers.

Basically, as long as you dont just go full throttle through it, nothing really you can do wrong :) and try and use a seperate hard disk if you can, get the hang of it before you go installing on extended partition.

Actually it IS pretty simple under Mandrake, but it is worth reading up on it first - and worth taking a backup of your files first. Mandrake uses a pretty good wizard to help you through this and you should be able to select the defaults, but there is an "Expert" mode if you want a bit more control.

Mandrake uses Grub by default, although LILO is also available. Both of these allow full control over which system you want to boot into and will permit a default together with a selectable time-out.

Good luck and have a lot of fun - I did and still do.

MrSums

I tried it and had no problems loading it on same HDD as XP Pro, you can choose which system loads as default and adjust the default delay time. Mandrake 9.1 is much better than 9.0, but I still prefer Windows. When Windows needs updating to pay Mr Gates pension, I just might go for Linux, it's getting better & more user friendly all the time.