[ILUG] Linux o/s

[Kevin Philp]

Hi Paul,
You probably want to dual boot your laptop. If you go for one of the easier to 
install distro's you normally get the option to resize  your windows 
partition during the install. 

The advice I was given was to defrag and order your windows partition first to 
ensure that everything is squashed into the beginning of the partiion then 
you won't lose anything when you shrink the partition... it worked for me.

Shrinking the partition and setting up your new partitions can all be done 
during the install. So pick a distro and boot the cd.

When you set up your new Linux partitions, to keep it simple you could just 
use two new partitions - one for / (root) and another for your home files 
(/home). Once again to keep life simple choose ext3 when asked for a 
filesystem. Some distro's have an "auto allocate" button which will do all 
this for you.

You will also be asked where to put the bootloader. I generally just go for 
the MBR (master boot record) and the installation is usually bright enough to 
spot your Windows partition and add that to the bootloader as well. When 
reboot you will get a menu that asks you wether you want Windows or Linux.

You need to pick a distro'.....always a contentious issue. If its your first 
dive into Linux I would suggest: Suse (Novell), Mandrive (Mandrake) or Fedora 
(Redhat). They all have well polished installation procedures that you should 
find easy to follow.

Good luck

Kevin.


On Friday 8 July 2005 15:37, O'Connor Paul-poconn04 wrote:
>Hi I am new to Linux and want to install on my laptop. I guess I must
> re-parition my hard drive. It's a inspiron 510m. Any guide lines to assist.
>
>
> Regards,
>Paul O Connor
>
>Development Environment & Computing Solutions (DECS),
>Motorola, Cork
>Email: poconn04 at motorola.com
>Phone: + 353-21-4511705
>Mobile: +353-85-7086556