Mandriva 10.1 on an AMD Mobile Athlon 64 Laptop

Hi folks,

I about to install Mandriva 10.1 on my laptop (AMD athlon 64 Gateway Laptop). After trying the x86_64 (on DVD) which won't launch the installation, I decided to go for the 32 bit version (i586). I have Windows XP preinstalled.

My question is: Do I have to create a partition for Linux prior to installing or does Mandriva manage the partitions during install and leave the windows alone ?
Does anyone have experience with 10.1 or 10.2 (32 or 64 bit) on AMD64 laptop?
Many thanks!
bombardi

Mandriva can create partitions, but it cannot resize existing ntfs ones (as far as I know). What I would suggest you do is download a live cd such as Knoppix and use the qtparted program on it to resize the ntfs partition and create a new empty partition.

Then install Mandriva to this new partition. Mandriva can autoallocate sizes for you during install onto an empty partition, just click on it and hit "Auto Allocate".

Oh, I have installed 10.1, but not on a AMD 64 desktop or Laptop. You might also want to try the install with acpi disabled or a failsafe install a guess as to why the AMD64 install didn't launch).

Thanks Alex for the tips!
I've got a 100 GB HD which is a new disc with only WinXP on it and a few files. The free space (75 GB) is more than what I intend to allocate for Linux (60 GB). Would Mandriva detect and pick the free available space and install itself without the need to create a partition?
-bombardi

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bombardi

I've got a 100 GB HD which is a new disc with only WinXP on it and a few files. The free space (75 GB) is more than what I intend to allocate for Linux (60 GB). Would Mandriva detect and pick the free available space and install itself without the need to create a partition?

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No, the thing is Linux uses a different file system from windows, so it needs a separate partition. Now, like I said before, I don't know if Mandriva can resize exisitng ntfs partitions, so that is the reason why I suggested you use a live cd such as Knoppix and the qtparted program on it to resize the drive. Alternatively, if you happen to have Partition Magic, you can create new partitions from within windows, do not format these partitions, just have mandriva install on them.

The way I would suggest you have your partitioning scheme setup is this:
40GB Windows C:\ NTFS
20GB Windows D:\ FAT32 (For sharing data between Windows and Linux, as Currently Linux can't write to NTFS partitions).
39.5GB / partition (The Linux equivalent of the C:\ drive)
.5 GB for swap partition. (Note, if you have >= 1GB RAM, disregard the swap partition)