Please help me to install linux

[mickscool]

Hi Friends,
I got Win 98 on C: and Win XP on D: drive.I need to replace 98 with Linux,can someone please please tell me if these are the rite steps:

Make a Boot Disk, from either Win98 or WinXP.
Boot off it and run:
fdisk
Delete the Win98 Partition, and Dont make another to replace it.

Restart your PC with the Redhat CD 1 in the drive and it will boot off the CD and begin installation.

When it gets to partitioning, tell it to do it all automatically, and use Only free-Unpartitioned space

But I dont have a floppy..so is there any other way to run fdisk,thou i have win 98 and win xp installation cd's.And what chages do i need to make to the boot.ini file so that it recognized win XP??Someone please hel me with this...i would really appreciate your help.
Thanks
Mick

[techieMoe]

Is your 98 drive a separate harddrive entirely, or just a partition on the same harddrive? You'll need to approach this differently depending on how you answer.

Also, you don't need to mess with the boot.ini file unless you just want to; most Linux bootloaders will load MS Windows just fine.

If 98 is on a separate drive, you don't need to do anything special before you install Linux; just pop in the first CD and tell the installer to use the whole drive.

If however 98 is on a partition of the same drive as XP, then you'll need to make sure you only delete the 98 partition and install using the empty space, as you mentioned earlier.

[Flatline]

Actually, you don't need to run fdisk; there is a handy-dandy partitioning tool in the RedHat installer (by the way, if you want to use RedHat, I would recommend going with Fedora unless you're using RHEL because it is much more recent and up to date - support for RedHat 9 was dropped some time ago). You just need to kill your Win98 partition with the installer's partitioner and set up a swap partition (usually 1.5X your amount of memory) and a / (root) partition.

[mickscool]

Hi Friends,
In all these years...i've never seen replies comin so fast .. i am new to this forum but i think this forum rocks.Ok,I have one harddrive with C(2gb free space) and D(3gb free space) partitions.I want to play around with linux....i got RH9 and knoppix 3.1(which i can use frm the cd).I want to get myself comfortable on linux....like setting up the apache servers on it,surfing the net..everything.If I go for fedora..I need to download it and it will take a long time.So,I thought I should go with RH9.0 for the time being.Finally,goin by your suggestions i should do this..rite??

Put RH9 cd...and format C: drive and install linux on it.
But will the xp be recognised by itself.then.

Thanks
Mick

[techieMoe]

Hi Friends,
In all these years...i've never seen replies comin so fast .. i am new to this forum but i think this forum rocks.Ok,I have one harddrive with C(2gb free space)

Well, you'll definitely need to make sure you don't install anything you don't need if you're only going to have 2GB worth of space. Make sure you check the "manually select packages" option. The "minimal" option usually doesn't install a graphical desktop, so unless you're just interested in going console cowboy (which would certainly be one way to learn Linux), you'll need to pick and choose your packages, constantly keeping an eye on how much space it's taking up (the installer tells you how much your selected packages are going to need).

[Flatline]

The system should set up a dual-boot configuration with RedHat and WinXP automagically; you will need to be aware, however, that linux doesn't see the partitions as C: and D:. In linux, the master drive on your primary drive chain is /dev/hda; the first partition on that drive would be /dev/hda1, the second would be /dev/hda2, etc. The second hard drive would be /dev/hdb with the first partition being /dev/hdb1, etc.

For SCSI it would be /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.

If you have your WinXP drive formatted as NTFS, it should be easy to tell which partition is for Win98, since it will be formatted as FAT32. Just be anal and triple-check before nuking a partition and you should be fine.

Techiemoe is right (as usual) though; if you only have 2Gb to work with, you will have to watch what you install.

[mickscool]

Hi techie Moe,
Rite now the C drive has 2gb of free space..but the total space is 5gb.So once I get rid of Win 98..i got 5gb of space..and I think thats enough for a custom installation...so should i proceed with the steps i mentioned.I could see from the partition magic that both the partitions are FAT 32.
Thanks

[Flatline]

Yeah, 5GB should be plenty for a custom install...you'd be surprised how quickly it can fill up, though

[techieMoe]

Hi techie Moe,
Rite now the C drive has 2gb of free space..but the total space is 5gb.So once I get rid of Win 98..i got 5gb of space..and I think thats enough for a custom installation...so should i proceed with the steps i mentioned.
Thanks

Ok. Well if you have 5GB you should be fine just choosing "Workstation" or any option other than "server". Last I checked, a full "workstation" or "desktop" installation of RH9 is around 3GB. That won't require any manual package selection on your part, unless you just want to shave off things you don't absolutely need.

[mickscool]

Thanks Flatline,
I am goin with the installation..and I hope I dont lose my Win XP data on the D: drive.I would use the redhat partition tool..and would delete the C: partition....but I am still worried as C: is the primamry partition and it contains the boot record for the Win XP system too.Anyways..you guys know much more then me..so let me give this a try..rite.
Thanks