Gparted and Grub questions

[Estam]

I am littled worried about asking these questions as I'm sure they sound so newbie'ish but I have been reading about trying to set up my hard drive and am finding it quite confusing. I am certainly not newbie to Windows XP and lots of it's quirks so reading about Linux has been a task learning a new set of vocabulary.

I have a eee 1000he and for various apps that I use the laptop for I would like to set up 5 partitions and would like to use one of the partitions to set up ubuntu and maybe another Linux product and learn how to use it. I have been wanting to do this for long time and now I have the chance.

Talking to few others that offered help and reading about Grub and Gparted I am getting to the point that I am trying to download Grub and found dozens of files from a ftp site and have the darnedest time trying to find an explanation of How To and decide which of the files to download and what to do with it.

I figure I'm not the only one who has asked for help but I'm sure there must be a site that simply explains how to set up a basic hard drive or site that could help.

Many thanks for any help or its back to the drawing board

[amenditman]

As you are new to Linux, I would recommend that you download Linux Mint iso and burn it to CD. It is a Live CD, with Gparted as one of the apps built in. It will allow you to partition your hdd and prep it for your installs.

Here is the Mint download page. Choose the Main edition.

Download - Linux Mint

If Mint won't run on your Eee, you could try Xubuntu or Lubuntu, they are designed for small resource machines, but I'm not sure if they have Gparted.

Once you have partitioned your hdd, you can carefully note your partition numbers and just install your Linux distros as desired. If Windows is installed first, then when you install Linux OS and Grub to MBR as part of the install, you will still have access to Windows thru Grub.

The other advantage of Mint is that they are very helpful to new users without attitude. Here at Linux Forums you can get support also with any issues you encounter after install. Mint is based on Ubuntu.

Good luck and let us know how you make out. Any questions? Ask.

Blessings
Bob

[Lostfarmer]

Do not download grub separately, it will be part of what ever linux you install.

[Estam]

Thanks for your help, I downloaded Linux Mint and took the test drive. Before I install it I have one quick question. I notice at the layout is fairly different to what I'm use to (XP) and before I go any further I need to ask if there is a Linux family an o/s that closely resembles XP in the way it handles. I understand there will be a learning curve but would be nice to keep it to a minimum. I'm a fairly old dog and only have so many tricks left to learn.

[Dougal]

Estam
You could try Freespire - it is very similar to Windows and installation of packages designed for it are easy also.
The only real bother with Freespire is a general lack of updating for the system. It tends to lag behind the other distributions of Linux.
I have tried several Linux versions and find Ubuntu to be the most friendly in the way it operates. Having said this my wife and daughters have found that the Crunchbang version of Linux is very easy to use. It seems to have the most complete set of codecs already installed to listen to music and play video, etc.
It is very small as well and should run well on smaller laptops. If anything goes wrong with it, it is easily fixed too.
Please coninue to take advice from others in this forum that will have a lot more experience than I have but, for my twopunce wirth Crunchbang is all that I need to surf the Internet, send emails through Google or whatever account you may have set-up through your Internet supplier. You can watch video easily as I said. You can either use the built-in Abiword for doing documents that are compatible with Microsoft Word when you save them in .doc format or you can easily install Openoffice for greater flexibility.
Linux has so many programs available to it and most are free...
Gparted is there as standard when installing (you can use the liveCD to get to grips first then simply click Install in the main menu if you want to go ahead). Like was said earlier as long as you know which partition Windows is on, you can't go wrong.
When Gparted starts during the install opt for customizing the parttitions and select to make a new partition in the spare one that you have. Make this double the size of your system RAM and set it as the 'Swap' area. Gparted will rescan your disc/s and present you with the partition table again. Now select to make another new partition with the remaining free space on the partition you have left and select the mount position as '/' (root). Select the format type as either the default ext3 or the newer ext4. Carry on and allow Gparted to make the changes as it asks you to and then continue to install the system. That's it - you will then be presented with a menu when you finally reboot your machine and remove the cd. This will have crunchbang or Ubuntu (if you have chosen this). I can't remember the disc set-up procedure for Freespire, this is why I have not spoken of this.
Once you have installed the system there are only a few commands you really need to know about and this can be covered at a later date.
See how you get on. As long as you have all your important files saved extranally have fun...