Linux Bible 2006 Edition - help...

[cel190ca]

I bought this book so I can install the SUSE10.0 version on my 'puter - I also got a hard drive today and formatted into 2 partitions fine and am now ready with the SUSE image disc to boot but what do I have to do when I restart the PC with the image in the CD drive?

I was hoping for an easy life with this book but the installation info seems a bit pants to be honest or maybe i'm stupid (most probable!)

Apologies if I haven't searched but i just haven't got the patience with this at the moment..... any info appreciated

[cel190ca]

Oh, I forgot to say HELLLOOOO

[antidrugue]

I bought this book so I can install the SUSE10.0 version on my 'puter - I also got a hard drive today and formatted into 2 partitions fine and am now ready with the SUSE image disc to boot but what do I have to do when I restart the PC with the image in the CD drive?

Do you mean this HD is empty? You formatted in 2 empty partitions?

If so (the HD is empty), just put in the CD, Suse will wype off the HD and install itself (not before asking you if it can do so).

The standard way to install any Linux distro is to leave unpartitionned space, as the distro will create the partition itself.

If you also have Windows on this HD, then just leave unpartitionned free space for Suse to install itself.

[cel190ca]

Do you mean this HD is empty? You formatted in 2 empty partitions?

If so (the HD is empty), just put in the CD, Suse will wype off the HD and install itself (not before asking you if it can do so).

The standard way to install any Linux distro is to leave unpartitionned space, as the distro will create the partition itself.

If you also have Windows on this HD, then just leave unpartitionned free space for Suse to install itself.

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. Basically I have my XP running on my original hard drive C: and I bought a separate drive today split into 2 partitions so I can use one for a bootable Unix OS and the other for storing files or to try another Unix flavour in future. Is this way ok?

Am I correct in understanding that when I've booted the SUSE image into one of the partitions on the new drive that when I restart the PC again I will be asked to select to boot using Win XP or SUSE?

This all may sound trivial but I really want to make sure i'm not going to screw anything up.

[void_false]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. Basically I have my XP running on my original hard drive C: and I bought a separate drive today split into 2 partitions so I can use one for a bootable Unix OS and the other for storing files or to try another Unix flavour in future. Is this way ok?

Am I correct in understanding that when I've booted the SUSE image into one of the partitions on the new drive that when I restart the PC again I will be asked to select to boot using Win XP or SUSE?

This all may sound trivial but I really want to make sure i'm not going to screw anything up.

GNU/Linux is not UNIX (GNU - GNU NOT UNIX )
Linux distro (including SUSE) need at least 2 partitions. One for itself and one for swap. And yes. You will be able to dual boot with mustdie.
BTW what file systems did you format?

[cel190ca]

GNU/Linux is not UNIX (GNU - GNU NOT UNIX )
Linux distro (including SUSE) need at least 2 partitions. One for itself and one for swap. And yes. You will be able to dual boot with mustdie.
BTW what file systems did you format?

Excuse me for being a newb but what is 'mustdie' and how do I configure it?

I used NTFS when formatting my new drive

[cel190ca]

Do you know what - for such a simple sounding book as a 'Bible', I can't believe how much trouble i'm having setting up a Linux OS on my PC - it really does suck when it comes to describe the startup/config disk! The Penguin is really gonna get a smack in the head sooner than I thought.

[spencerf]

first off don't make this harder then it actually is sometimes it is easy to overthink these kind of things.

Next, make sure in your bios you have your cddrive set as the first boot option. Pop in the suse cd and it will be a guided graphical install. I would let suse wipe your harddrive you just bought of the partitions you previously created. You can tell it what partitions you would like.

I would create three partitions for the simplest setup.
The first one should be fairly large and it will be mounted at "/" --which means root. This is the basic starting point for everything. The next one will be SWAP and as a general rule some people suggest doubling your amount of ram I have never had a swap space greater then 512Mb because if you have a lot of ram you will probably never even use it. But this is your choice. The next partition use the rest of your space up but don't give it a mount point because you can use this extra space in the future if you want to try out another linux distribution.

you can dual boot with windows. There are two bootloaders that linux uses (1) grub --seems to be the most popular nowadays and is usually the default for most distro's (2) lilo which used to be the standard but is becoming less popular these days. But regardless suse should automatically detect that you have a windows installation on your first harddrive and edit your configuration files to allow you to dual boot. If for some reason you reboot your computer (remember to change boot order in your bios to your second harddrive if want to have a linux boot option) then post your troubles here and we can tell you how to get a dual-boot setup.

[void_false]

Excuse me for being a newb but what is 'mustdie' and how do I configure it?

Must Die = m$ windoze.

I used NTFS when formatting my new drive

Linux has it's own file systems (ext2, ext3, reiserfs, etc...)
Actually it would be better if you leave you HD unformatted. Just put SUSE install CD into you CD-ROM, reboot PC and follow the instrucrions. SUSE has abilities to partition/format you hard drive.

[cel190ca]

Hey guys thanks for the info, I screwed up my disks as I didn't burn them as images! and also I was a little concerned that the install would make its way onto my Windows drive and not the new drive I just bought.

Anywhooo it's installed on the new drive and formatted by the installer and not windows.

Must admit, I don't think i'll be using Windows much now, I didn't realise how graphically user friendly a Linux version would be - I only wanted to install Linux as to learn more OS stuff as I didn't want to screw anything up at work.

Oh well, i'm off to install my Speedtouch adsl modem now - got the info so lets hope it works!

Oh, another thing - how about virus protection if I primarily use Suse for web access?

Thanks....