Which first? (Win98, NT, or Linux) 1

[Cirvam]

I am building myself a new computer and want to be able to run win98, Nt and slackwear linux on it. Which should I install first and what do I need to do?<br>The computer is a Celeron 333, 128mb of ram, 10gb harddrive. I was thinking of haveing a 5gb partistion for win98 (games) and a 2 gb partition for NT and the rest for linux. Does this sound reasonable?<br><br>Erik

 

[mregan]

If you are using LILO to boot your system you need to keep all the Linux &quot;boot&quot; files below the 1024 cylinder on the harddrive. That should be around 8G, so your configuration might work. It is a bit dangerous, however, since one of the files might be saved above the 1024 limit.<br><br>The fix for this problem is to create a small Linux partition near the front of the disk. It can be quite small, a few Meg, since it will only contain the &quot;boot&quot; files. <p>Michael Regan<br><a href=mailto:mregan@bccs-ca.com>mregan@bccs-ca.com</a><br><a href=

http://www.bccs-ca.com/>Black

Cat Computer Systems</a><br>Black Cat Computer Systems build Linux servers and work<br>
stations for the small office. Our systems feature the AMD<br>
line of processors. They are an excellent balance of price,<br>
performance and reliability.<br>

 

[Cirvam]

Ok I was planning to use the LILO however I heard that NT bootloader is easier and more flexable to use. What do you think?<br><br>Erik

 

[AndyBo]

From what I've seen, it's pretty much a case of 6

 

[pmkincaid]

Here are my recommendations:<br>Install Win98, then NT, then Linux.&nbsp;&nbsp;This order is necessary for the NT install to recognize the 98 install and for LILO to be on the boot partition (if LILO is on the HD - using a floppy, as you'll see below, MIGHT not make a difference, but I think for consistancy and to ensure the NT files are not overwritten since LILO will probably not work on the boot partition)<br><br>You should really use LILO to boot into Linux, NT Bootloader really won't work (yes, you can use LoadLin from DOS, but LILO is much easier from my experience).&nbsp;&nbsp;This is a lot simply from a personal perspective, as AndyBo indicated, there really isn't much difference in robustness of each, although I don't know how reliable LoadLin is...&nbsp;&nbsp;If it was me, I'd stick with LILO...<br><br>As for the size limitations, I solved that on my home computer (which boots SuSE Linux and 98) and I use a boot disk to get into Linux, since my HD is 20 GB.&nbsp;&nbsp;When you are installing linux, you should get the option to create a boot disk - I'm not familiar with Slack, but SuSE created a boot disk that had LILO on it.&nbsp;&nbsp;If anyone else can give a better idea about this I like to know too. (I installed Linux on a machine that already had Win98, so I couldn't create that first, small Linux partition as AndyBo indicated)<br><br>I have not ventured into trying and figuring out the LILO thing on my large harddrive since the boot floppy is easy enough and works like a champ.<br><br>Hope this helps, let me know if you'd like some more info, I'd be happy to help.<br><br>Paul Kincaid

 

[Cirvam]

Thanks that makes installing easy! <br>I now know what I'm going to do and you guys have helped me figure out any problems I might have <br>Should the boot partition be about 50 or 100 mb? and what do I need to install on that? <p> Erik<br><a href=mailto:cirvam@netzero.net>cirvam@netzero.net</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Looking to learn more about Linux, Apache, PHP and others.

 

[AndyBo]

Oops - I was using &quot;kfm&quot; to browse with, and somehow I managed to chop most of my last post!&nbsp;&nbsp;Or else it's just not displaying correctly now. Hmmm....<br><br>Anyway, I'd pretty much said what Paul had said, although I got the installation order wrong.&nbsp;&nbsp;(Mixed up the Win98 and NT installs.)&nbsp;&nbsp;I'd agree with what he says about LILO.&nbsp;&nbsp;It's definitely worth learning, and can handle all three OSes with no problems, AFAIK.<br><br>However, if you want something a little friendlier, you might want to have a look at IBM's Boot Manager.&nbsp;&nbsp;You get a copy of this with Partition Magic.&nbsp;&nbsp;On the Open Source front, there's also a utility called &quot;CHOS&quot; which is, I believe, a graphical boot utility.&nbsp;&nbsp;I understand that there are DOS and Linux versions available as well, so you can set up the boot sector from whichever environment you can get running.&nbsp;&nbsp;Gotta say, though, I've never used either of these so your mileage may vary.<br><br>Finally, as to the small &quot;boot&quot; partition, 50 Mb should be enough.&nbsp;&nbsp;However, if you want to keep different versions of the kernel lying around, make it 100Mb.&nbsp;&nbsp;When installing Linux you will come to a phase - quite early on - that asks you what you want to mount various partitions as.&nbsp;&nbsp;As most distributions these days seem to conform to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (<A HREF="

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/"

TARGET="_new">

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/</A>),

for the 50Mb partition, tell it to mount as &quot;/boot&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;This way, when the system is installing it will put the boot files in the required place.&nbsp;&nbsp;(NOTE:&nbsp;&nbsp;I'm not familiar with Slakware, and it may be that their boot partition is called &quot;/stand&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;You'd need to check your documentation to confirm.)<br><br>Good Luck!

 

[ndogg]

You could also use the Ranish Partition manager (<A HREF="

http://come.to/ranish"

TARGET="_new">

http://come.to/ranish</A>

<p>REH<br><a href=mailto:hawkdogg@crosswinds.net>hawkdogg@crosswinds.net</a><br><a href=

http://www.crosswinds.net/~hawkdogg>Powered

by Linux</a><br>Learn Linux and Leave out the Windows