Fedora Core 1 & Win XP Pro - Dual Booting

[thekidscareya]

Sorry, I just assume that it's obvious what swap is... I mean, everyone knows that these days, don't they? Don't they?! Uhmm... :-/

On virtually all operating systems today (including Windows, Linux, MacOS, UNIX, ad infinitum), the programs you keep running usually take more memory than you have. Thus, the operating system moves memory that hasn't been used for a while into what it calls a "swap space", and moves it back into RAM when the program needs it again. On Windows 9x/ME, this was stored in the file C:\Windows\Win386.swp if I recall correctly, on WinNT/2k/XP, I think this file is called C:\SWAPFILE.SYS or similar. Linux and UNIX usually use a seperate partition for this purpose, which has the advantage of being faster.
Technically speaking, you can set Linux up to use a file for swapping instead, but that's hard (well, not really, but if you don't know Linux, then it's hard). There's no real point in doing that, though.

In any case, when you get into the Fedora installer's partition manager and create a new partition, there will be a drop-down menu that allows you to choose the partition type, and among the choices will be "swap".

As for booting, once the system is installed, then naturally you don't need the CD to boot.

Oh, so basically its RAM on your hard drive, right?

[Dolda2000]

Well, not exactly, but you can refer to it that way. It's kind of like RAM expansion on the hard drive, but it's a bit inaccurate, considering how complex the memory manager is.

[thekidscareya]

Well, not exactly, but you can refer to it that way. It's kind of like RAM expansion on the hard drive, but it's a bit inaccurate, considering how complex the memory manager is.

Thanks a lot for your help. I appreciate it.