Reformatting hard drive

[hunsie747]

Hello. Obviously, I am completely new to the world of Linux. The reason I encountered it was because my high school is now offering a Linux class. The class is essentially self-taught, so I am in need of some assistance. The goal of the class is to reformat a computer hard drive and install a Linux OS. I have to this point learned the basics of what Linux is and the history of it, but as to how to accomplish the goal of the class, both my teacher and I are going to be learning. The computer is an old school computer from another building, and it is still protected by a network password, although it is not connected to the network. I was just wondering how I should go about handling this with the security on the computer. Any comments or reccomendations for online readings would be greatly appreciated.

[anomie]

Sounds like a nice class/opportunity.

Boot from your Linux installation media. (You may have to change the boot order in the BIOS to enable this.) Install away. Part of a standard installation is to partition your disk and format the filesystems.

[Freston]

Welcome to the forums!

That sure sounds like an interesting class. It probably would have been more interesting if the computer was still plugged into the network

I don't know the specs of the computer, but I suggest first reading up on things like:

Partitioning
File systems
Mounting
Bash commands

Most of these things will be handled automagically by many modern distro's. But since it's a learning question rather than a "I want to email and internet within 30 minutes on a Linux box" type of question...

You can start here

Don't worry about the password, booting from an installation or LifeCD will overrule it.

[Freedom]

Sounds like you are in for a great class!

The best way to learn the ins and outs of a nix system is to work with it a lot. I learned by manually compiling a Gentoo system and then went on to compile a Slackware system after I am familiar with soem cammands.

Hope you enjoy the class and come back soon!

[oz]

Yeah, definitely think some about partitions, filesystems, and mount points as suggested above by Freston because that always seems to be the first hurdle for new users.

The main thing is to have fun with the Linux experience!