mandrake9.1/winXP

[pfmrof]

I think I read/ heard Mandrake9.1 will do the partition on the winXP NFTS to install the Mandrake9.1 without a seperate partition program.
I have a Dell notebook with WinXP home as the os, and would like to try a Linux OS on it to try to learn it, but I would like one that will install easily as I am clueless as to partitioning at this time.
Hope you can give me advice and/or your thoughts on this.

[andutt]

Try Mandrake or redhat 8.0,9. The installation process is graphical and easy to understand. If you are a complete newbie the installation program can partition your linux partitions automaticlly. Make sure though that you DONT touch your ntfs partition where you have your XP installed. That partition will apear outgreyed in the partition program. When the installation is completed you will be able to choose in the bootloader which OS you want to run.

Regards

[Dolda2000]

Did you mean that you want to shrink your NTFS partition since it's taking up your entire drive? In that case you will need Mandrake, because RedHat does not ship with a NTFS resizing tool.
Be aware, that resizing filesystems is _always_ dangerous, and although it _should_ work, there's no guarantee, especially for such a poorly documented filesystem like NTFS. Do backup everything that's important to you first.

[pfmrof]

Thanks for both replys.
Yes, I did mean I want to shrink the NTFS as WinXP is on the 20gig harddrive that came with the laptop.
So it looks to be the Mandrake. I have tried both Red Hat and Mandrake on a desktop before and enjoyed trying them out, but they were a compete install, formattimg the drive.
They did not support all the hardware I have and needed, so I went back to windows.
With the laptop I can dual booot and be able to learn Linux while still having the windows as backup.
Once again, thanks for the input.