> I've heard the stories of the greatness of Linux so I bought it. It's
> completely Greek to me.
You'll learn. I suggest getting a book or two. Also know that to get
help on something type "man ____" (where ____ is the topic). Scroll up
and down with the arrow keys.
A few commands...
directory listing: ls
change directory: cd
run command: <type its name>
If it can't find a command even though it's in the current directory,
type ./ before the command name.
If you want, you could set it up to go to X whenever you start. X is
short for the X Window System, the graphical side of Linux.
> It's so Greek I don't know where to begin with the installation. I have
> 2 hard drives: 1) my primary C drive which has Windows 98 on it and not
> enough room to partition it and install Linux as well and 2) a new HD I
> bought yesterday just for my new happy Linux system.
>
> I am getting the impression I have to install Linux on my primary drive.
> Is this true? Can I just install it on my new 17.6 Gig hard drive which
I want one. Hehehe.
> I have already partitioned into 2 equal sizes? If I can install on my
Already partitioned into two equal sizes? Why?
You can do the partitioning during the installation with Disk Druid or
fdisk.
> new drive can I skip using the fips crap and just do a normal install?
fips is for splitting one large DOS disk into a smaller DOS partition
and another partition ready to be formatted with the EXT2 filesystem
(which Linux uses).
You'll want to partition the second hard disk into a root partition, a
/home partition, and a swap partition. Guys? Any better ideas?
The swap partition is for virtual memory. How much memory do you have?
I've heard that it's a good idea to make it 250% of how much physical
RAM you have. Guys?
> Then how do I set up the boot manager to ask me which OS I'd like to use
> at startup?
LILO is great at this. So, install LILO into the MBR--master boot
record--of your master hard disk (which is probably the old one). Tell
LILO that you have a DOS/Windows 98 installation on /dev/hda1.
Hey. Do you have SCSI drives? That changes this a little... maybe
you'll figure it out anyway. I don't have SCSI anything, so I can't
help you. Well, actually, my trash can is pretty scuzzy... never mind.
So can you even run the installation program? If you can get your BIOS
to boot from a CD, then simply set it to do that, insert the CD, and
reboot. If not, you can use rawrite (on the CD) to make an installation
floppy. Read the documentation if you can.
