Need to introduce my Windoze laptop to the joys of Linux...

[MaverickUK]

but I need to make it dual boot (PIII something, 128Mb ram, 10Gb HDD).

Never done this before but I have my hands on partition magic...any pointers before I start ploughing through the manual?

Also, what in your opinion is the best distro for Laptops? Have Suse 8.1 (personal), RH9 and Mandrake 9.1.

Mainly for demoing Intranet apps on MySQL/PostgreSQL.

Ta muchly for any opinions/pointers/general comments.

[Nerderello]

you'll need two (or possible 3) partitions for Linux.
The first is the main (large) one and this is where Linux will live, the second is smaller (say between 200 and 400 mb) and is the swap partition (does the same job as Swapper.dat does in windows).

IF the distro needs a /boot partition (neither RH9 or Mandrake does) then this will be another small partion (maybe 100 mb max) which would house the kernels.

As to how big the first/main partition needs to be, anything greater than about 2.5gb. It all depends upon how much stuff you want to load.

As to how. Once you have your hard disk partitioned the way you want (ie. a Windows partition, a main Linux partition (you'll be putting ext3 file system on there), and a swap partition (file system type is, not surprisingly, swap) all you have to do is boot from the first CDROM
and follow the prompts.

You'll end up with Linux installed, plus a boot loader (either LILO or GRUB) installed on the MBR of your hard disk. This boot loader will let you choose between Windows and Linux at boot time.

As to which distro, it's a toss up. I'd probably end up going for Mandrake, as Redhat are changing the way they do things.

have fun

Nerderello

[MaverickUK]

you'll need two (or possible 3) partitions for Linux.
The first is the main (large) one and this is where Linux will live, the second is smaller (say between 200 and 400 mb) and is the swap partition (does the same job as Swapper.dat does in windows).

IF the distro needs a /boot partition (neither RH9 or Mandrake does) then this will be another small partion (maybe 100 mb max) which would house the kernels.

As to how big the first/main partition needs to be, anything greater than about 2.5gb. It all depends upon how much stuff you want to load.

As to how. Once you have your hard disk partitioned the way you want (ie. a Windows partition, a main Linux partition (you'll be putting ext3 file system on there), and a swap partition (file system type is, not surprisingly, swap) all you have to do is boot from the first CDROM
and follow the prompts.

You'll end up with Linux installed, plus a boot loader (either LILO or GRUB) installed on the MBR of your hard disk. This boot loader will let you choose between Windows and Linux at boot time.

As to which distro, it's a toss up. I'd probably end up going for Mandrake, as Redhat are changing the way they do things.

have fun

Nerderello

are most kind!

Many thanks..

As it's a Friday and the wife is out maybe tonight is THE night!

[Chris H]

Not enough memory to run RH9 satisfactorily. Personally I found Suse 8.2 a little flakey. Mandrake 9.1, or even 9.2 definitely.

[MaverickUK]

So, if RH9 is gonna be too heavy, what install do you reckon will work? How many iterations back would I have to go to get a decent install...?

Cheers

[Chris H]

So, if RH9 is gonna be too heavy, what install do you reckon will work? How many iterations back would I have to go to get a decent install...?

Cheers

Whoops! Meant to say Mandrake 9.1 or 9.2 definitely the ones to go for. Maybe even Suse 9.0 but perhaps check their site for minimum spec?

[big_k105]

i have ran rh9 on a computer with a K6 233Mhz, 128Mb ram and 10 gig hd and it ran pretty good but kind of slow i think that if you are running kde or gnome it is always goin to be kind of choppy on these specs but i have heard that gnome is less of a memory hog then kde so what ever you chose i would recommend you use gnome over kde. or any of the other gui's

well hope this helps

[flw]

On the partition aspect it will be most helpful to have three. One for Win, one fat32 to be shared and one for Linux. Then file like music can be shared betweent the two and is also convient way of transfering files from one OS to another.

That how mine is setup anyway. I used to just have two paritions but anything I wanted to share betweent the two OS was a hassle. Then I needed a copy for each partition like for music sharing.