Well, to do a tango on windows use the windows boot disk that
should've come with your copy of windows. Run fdisk and delete the
windows (win32) partition. Reboot. To reinstall after that, stick the
same disk back in if you've removed it and use fdisk to make a new windows
partition. (All this by selecting "star computer with/without cdrom
support" (you don't really need it for fdisking)) Now reboot again and
select "install windows". Follow the resulting 40 minutes to hour's worth
of instructions and babysitting whilst it reconstructs itself. You should
have all your driver disks that came with your system handy, just in case
the windows CD doesn't have drivers for a particular piece of hardware.
NB: I wouldn't recommend doing all that unless you really, really
mean it. :^)
So, installing linux: the easiest method is from a CD. You can
get one from www.cheapbytes.com for around $1.99, or borrow someone
else's. Common distributions ("flavors") of linux are RedHat, SuSe,
OpenLinux (Caldera), Mandrake, Slackware, and Debian. It's generally
accepted that RedHat or the strongly redhat-based Mandrake are good
choices for beginners. Whichever linux distro you get should come with
extensive install instructions (like in html form on the CD for example
that you can read from win32). But the short version goes like this:
1) use fips to make a partition for linux (one big one for
everything but swap space (virtual memory, good for when you have lots of
memory-hungry processes running), and a tiny swap partition (usual rule of
thumb is 2x physical ram, max swap size is 128mb, so if you want 256 or
more make multiple swap partitions (I have 128 ram and 128 swap and I'm
fine, so your mileage may vary))). This can be done by "shrinking" your
windows partition on your main disk (probably shouldn't make it smaller
than ~2-3gig) or getting a second/third harddisk (I use an old 2gig drive
for my second disk with linux on it).
2) if you have a 'bootable' cdrom, hit del or whatever on reboot
to enter the CMOS startup thing, and change the drive-check order so that
the machine checks the cdrom for bootable media before the HD (the master
boot record (MBR) of win32 resides on teh HD so the idea is to swat the
computer into linux before it checks the HD and boots win32). Insert
cdrom into drive, and reboot. Follow the instructions from the linux
install program from then on.
3) If not, the old standby is to use the rawwrite to make a 3.5
floppy into a linux boot disk by bitwise directly copying a boot.img image
file onto it. (Something like d:\dosutils\rawrite d:\images\boot.img a:\)
Stick said disk into drive and reboot. Typical configuration is to check
floppy before HD so this should work. Then follow instructions from
there.
[ "Following instructions" consists of things like telling it what
timezone you're in, what keyboard you use, what software you want to
install past just linux, blah blah blah. :) ).
Advice: Get _Running Linux_ 3rd ed. The second edition of that
book helped me tremendously when I was just starting out. For your first
install, have someone experienced there to help out if need be. (I've
installed linux several times, and windows, and I actually think the linux
install process is easier once you get used to it.) You'll probably screw
up your first linux install either during it or afterwards through some
bone-headed sysadmin mistake (I did). Just chalk it up to experience, and
make sure you back up anything important you do to floppy or whatever. At
first linux might seem teribbly opaque, but stick with it for a few months
and you'll get the hang of it.
I hope all that helps a little. Don't hesitate to drop me a line
if you need anything else. :^)
mike
*****************Michael Orion Jackson******************
***********TAMS Class of 96/UT Class of 200?************
*********************Random Quote:**********************
*Various Views by People of Different Job Types: *
* Programmer: Why isn't this shit working? *
* Sysadmin: Let's secure this shit and restrict logins.*
* Linux User: c.f. Programmer above. *
* MCSE holder: Let's network this shit! *
* Chemist: Have you read the MSDS on this shit? Yikes! *
* Perl hacker: Hey, I can do that shit in one LOC! :) *
* Student chemist spilling H2SO4 (18M): Oh, shit! TA! *
* Censorship proponent: Save the children from ****! *
* C Programmer: What's the printf code for that shit? *
* C++ Programmer: Shit comes in streams. *
* Java Programmer: Shit is an object! *
* TCL/Tk Programmer: This shit's easy! *
* Windows User: What's this blue screen 0E shit mean? *
* Liberal Arts Student: What good is this shit? *
* Tech recruiter: Shit's better over at XYZ Corp.... *
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