Re: [newbie] Digest version of Newbie available
On Wed, 29 May 2002 14:33, dfox wrote: First question: I have a 6 gig disk internal and it is already partitioned. Can I just clean one of those partitions and install linux on it so it is not necessary to blow away the whole disk and all my wonderful contents? Should be able to do that. I'm running 8.1 on hdb7 (seventh partition of second IDE drive). Other partitions were saved from earlier installs, although I set this up (and installed 7.2) on a new drive when my earlier driev had become too small to be useful. dh Yeah, You probably want about half (2.5-3Gig) for a good GUI install. -- Michael Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Digest version of Newbie available
On Tue, 28 May 2002 15:12, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On Mon, 27 May 2002 20:46:01 -0600 (MDT), Jim Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Someone else here may be better qualified to answer about how big each partition should be; but then, it really depends on what you want to do anyway. I believe the rule of thumb for swap is to make it about the same size as your physical memory. As such, I have 128 meg RAM, and a 128 meg swap. The generally accepted rule-of-thumb is to have a swap size of twice your RAM. In your case, you would be better off with a swap of 256MB. In general practice, there is little to gain from having a swap of over 512MB on a standard desktop system (though it may be useful for servers and workstations). Not sure where the subject line came from, is this a piggyback thread? Certainly got my attention. Sounds like the hard drive is already partitioned and you have no qualms about wiping one, or more, of the partitions to install Linux on. Mandrakes Linux is real user freindly in this respect. The install has a GUI that lets you delete existng partitions without molesting others. If you are able to make the deletable area contiguous --- big word for the day, WOOHOO! and you allow 4Gig or more. then the install will suggest sizes for the various partitions. As a first timer, i recommend you accept the suggestions as they stand. You can always reinstall later. Leaving a Fat32 partition even if you have NTFS is also good advise as Linux reads and writes well to Fat32. NTFS can become troublesome. Ext2 WAS the main Linux partitioning filesystem of the past. But it is well dated and now is superceded by several good modern journaling filesystems. Mandrake's 'tester' has recommended on this list that he has few probs with any of them (ext3 has some iffy's) but that in his experience XFS is as close to bulletproof as it gets. This is selectable as part of the install during the partitioning phase as well. No flame war on that recommend plz. I recommend you also go for a browse through ZDNet for hardware compatability. Be prepared to keep a good log of what you do post install that effects your system. Oh... yeah, i say to much sometimes chow -- Michael Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Digest version of Newbie available
In general, Linux requires two partitions: one for / and one for swap. I've heard that if you have enough RAM you can do without a swap, but I don't know if that's true. Anyone ever done that? Further, most people install with 3 or more partitions. Mine right now has /, swap, /usr and /home all on their own partitions. PartitionMagic 7.0 is a wonderful thing. You can add, delete and resize partitions without losing data. It's incredibly slow and inefficient, though, (mine took 8.5 hours to repartition a 40 gig drive that was about 75% full) so beware. But in the end, it worked and it worked flawlessly, with no data loss or any problems. --jim On Mon, 27 May 2002, Dwight Hines wrote: I've just subscribed and will only be able to work on the linux on my powerbook G3 firewire after hours and on weekends. I have not yet installed or obtained the software. My plan is to read the digests for a while and then when I have some time go for the installation. First question: I have a 6 gig disk internal and it is already partitioned. Can I just clean one of those partitions and install linux on it so it is not necessary to blow away the whole disk and all my wonderful contents? Thank you in advance, dh ~ Love her as I loved her, and there will be joy.~ King Humperdink Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Digest version of Newbie available
In general, Linux requires two partitions: one for / and one for swap. I've heard that if you have enough RAM you can do without a swap, but I don't know if that's true. Anyone ever done that? Further, most people install with 3 or more partitions. Mine right now has /, swap, /usr and /home all on their own partitions. With my present partition scheme, I could set up three partitions for linux and still have one left for OS9.2.2 and a spare. But, how much space does /, swap, and /usr require each? PartitionMagic 7.0 is a wonderful thing. You can add, delete and resize partitions without losing data. It's incredibly slow and inefficient, though, (mine took 8.5 hours to repartition a 40 gig drive that was about 75% full) so beware. But in the end, it worked and it worked flawlessly, with no data loss or any problems. I don't think speed is a concern, it could go overnight for me. But, in the partitioning is there a difference in how the file structures are set up so the actual separation into different disks is only a part of what needs to be done? d --jim Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
