Putting Linux on a partition 1

[TaiChi56]

I have a 80gig hard drive that I just reformated. I partitioned 30 gigs of it for RedHat 9. The other 50 is XP Pro. I am using Partition Magic 8.0. When I am ready to partition for Linux it gives me several options. They are Linux ext2, Linux ext3, or Linux swap. Which one should I use?

The secret in education lies in respecting the student. {Ralph Waldo Emerson}.

 

[RhythmAce]

You will need at least these 3 partitions, /swap. /boot and / (called root). You can let the installer do this for you. When prompted to partiton it manually or let disk druid do it automatically, select disk druid. If You have existing partitions, it will ask you if you just want to repartition the linux partitions or all of them. If you only created the windows partition, then tell it to use only the available space. Unless you are very sure of what you are doing, let disk druid partition and format the drive for you. It will show you what it did. You can accept the default or make changes at this point. Everything except /swap will be ext3 by default. Later, you will be asked which boot loader to use. You have a choice of lilo or grub. You then have a choice of where to install it. Choose the master boot record (MBR). The boot loader prompts you for which OS to start at boot up.

 

[TaiChi56]

Excellent advice. I have RedHat 9 running on my computer, coexisting with XP pro (go figure). So far I really like. Learning curve though. Here is a question:

How do I open an exe file in linux. I downloaded Flash for the Internet. But then I needed a program to open the exe. So I downloaed Winrar. But it is for command line only. I know how to get to the command line, just do not know what to type. Help. Thank you.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student. {Ralph Waldo Emerson}.

 

[manarth]

1. exe's are generally windows exe's - they don't often work in Linunx.

2. hda refers to 'hard disk a'; hda1 refers to 'hard disk a, partition 1' etc.
The SWAP partion is 'virtual memory' - if you know what that is: great, if not: you don't really need to know. The Swap partition should normally be twice the size of your RAM (i.e. 256MB Ram = 512MB Swap Partition.)

3. ext2 and ext3 are different file systems (like NTFS vs FAT32). Generally, ext2 is more compatible, and ext3 has more functions - take your pick.

4. flash - it depends on the program you use to access the internet. installation procedure varies. if you need more help, please tell us what internet browser you use.

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