Where to start?

[jasonlambert]

Its good to hear youre enjoying linux

Its a pretty good range of languages you know, im impressed by anyone with the dicipline to teach themselves such a range

Jason

[sarumont]

Great to hear that you're having fun with linux. I love the control that you have and the stability that you get just from installing linux. There's nothing that I've encountered that you can't get done in linux just as well and probably better than you can in windoze. Welcome to the light!

[Scrowler]

I am also wanting to start, I have two hd's attached to my system (win9 one is 14gb and one is 7gb. Win98 is on the 14gb.
Could somebody post how to download the file, and how to install it? And possibly how to select the OS on bootup?
Appreiciated.

[bluegroper]

Try reading a few of these, including the one about installing.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...r-formats/pdf/

ß

[CopperTop]

Scrowler,

As a relative newbie myself, I highly recommend using Redhat for your first time. I'll try and summarize what I went through, as I have a similar setup to you. My PC had a 40GB drive running XP, and I added a 3GB slave drive to run a stripped down version of Redhat 9.0. The easiest way to get the files and install them, is download some iso images and burn them to cd. To get the files for RH 9.0, go here: http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/9/en/iso/i386/ and download the three i386 iso files. Using a program like Nero, burn the iso files to disc.

To begin the install, change the bios to boot from cd and have disc 1 inserted. You will start by seting up basic stuff like language and mouse. Select a new linux install instead of an upgrade. Choose the personal desktop as the install type and let it do automatic partitioning. It will assign a boot partition (/boot), a swap partition (about double the size of your installed RAM), and the rest to the root partition (/). Choose to remove linux partions only so that it will leave your Win98 alone. It will display your hard drives - select /dev/hdb which will be your slave or second drive (assuming Win98 is the master). With a 7GB drive, you can do a full install, or just select the components you want which will give you a much smaller install (like mine ).

As for selecting which os to run at start up, I used the bootloader included in the distro. The gui will prompt you to select a bootloader ('grub' is the default and the one I went with). Set the options /dev/hda1 - Windows 98, /dev/hdb1 - Linux. Choose to write the bootloader to the linux boot sector (not the mbr). I believe I then changed my bios to boot in the following order - a:, ide1(slave), ide0(master), CD ROM. Then when you start the machine, it should start grub and allow you to select which os you want. The rest of the install is pretty straight forward - Redhat has a really user friendly installation gui that will walk you through everything you need to do.

If you have any other specific questions, fire away - there are some very knowledgle members on this site!

[Scrowler]

Help! The links are broken from the dload site and I don't trust linux partitions, as I've heard they can f*ck you over, I want to install linux to our second drive, the slave (7gb)

Edited:flw

[flw]

I don't trust linux partitions

What is it about ext2 or 3 that you are concerned about?

[CopperTop]

Help! The links are broken from the dload site

Try this link instead: RedHat

I want to install linux to our second drive, the slave (7gb)

That's what I was explaining. Linux still needs partitions to operate properly, even on a stand-alone drive.

[Scrowler]

Will a linux partition screw up my drive? I mean what if I want to install windows instead again? Will it make my drive permanently Linux able? and none other?

[jasonlambert]

No, you will be able to install windows on it again.

Jason