On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 12:20, Ken Hawkins wrote: > PPS Mandatory ON TOPIC: I bunged my main home computer (MDK8.2) when I > tried to install w2k [DONT GO THERE!]. Since I managed to make it even > worse, I am now going to a clean-sheet install. I will be doing MDK 8.2, > Win98, and W2K. I have 3 separate drives (6gb, 20gb, and 30gb). Any > recommendations for install order, and partition schema? 8.2 ran just > ducky, but is there justification to go to 9.0?
The order to install OSes is: Win9x, then NT/2000/XP, then Linux.
The reason is that Win 9x is too stupid to recognize multiple-OS
installations, and will automatically overwrite the boot sector of your
PC during installation. This is easy to fix in Linux, just boot from the
CD or floppy, and re-run LILO. But if you're doing fresh installs
anyway, then you might as well just do it right the first time :-)
WinNT/2000/XP will recognize an installation of Win9x, so it will
overwrite the boot sector, but it will give you a dual-boot option so
you can choose Win9x or WinNT/2000. Finally, Mandrake (or any Linux)
will recognize all of your partitions, and will correctly allow you to
multi-boot all of your installed OSes, as it should be.
For partition schemas, it's really hard to say because I don't know your
filesystem and security requirements. I generally try to install the OS
on a separate partition from the apps, and the apps on a separate
partition from the data, thus I use 3 partitions *per Windows OS*, and
even more than that for Linux (generally /var, /home, /boot and /usr get
their own partitions, and I leave the rest as one partition, thus 5
Linux partitions -- YMMV). I also prefer to use NTFS on all WinNT/2000
partitions. But doing so will mean that Win 9x can't read your data
partition, and Linux can read but can't write your data partition
(actually, can Linux read from NTFS 5? Maybe not, maybe only NTFS 4
...). Is this a problem? You tell me. If you need the data accessible to
all OSes, then put it on a FAT32 partition, preferably a different from
the partition that Win 9x is installed on. If Win9x is only for gaming,
then keep your data on something mutually readable for Win2k and Linux,
probably requiring FAT32 if you want Linux to have write access to the
data.
I can't speak to your question about Mandrake 9.0, but I plan on
upgrading sometime after it's been officially released, maybe 6 months
(and preferably an additional point release, to 9.1).
--
Dave Sherman | "They that can give up essential liberty
MCSE, MCSA, CCNA | to obtain a little temporary safety
| deserve neither liberty nor safety."
| - Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
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