Quote: Original post by Chalma
2)do I need a linux swap partion? if I do do I need to partition my hd 3 times?(once for linux, one for fat32, other for linux swap?)

If the distro you're trying has linux kernel 2.6, then you can go with a swap FILE. Otherwise, yeah, you should have a swap partition.

Quote: 3)lets say I pick some mom-and-pop distro as my linux and I decide that sucks, I want something else to be the linux, what exactly is changing? do I have to mess with the MBR again? how do I change the grub settings without actually reinstalling a distro?

Installing a different distro is that same as installing a distro for the first time, except that you've already got partitions created. It's best to wipe them clean. If you want to preserve data, 'tar' up your home directories and copy that backup someplace safe, then do a reinstall. It's pretty easy.

Quote: 4)can I continue leaving the linux portion of the startup code blank until I decide on a linux OS to install?

5)if I totally screw this up can I get my original settings back.

I understand why you're so concerned with booting and stuff, but really, it's not that difficult. I remember when I first installed mandrake ready to do a pile of stuff to get it working right, and watched as the installer magically did everything for me. I rebooted and was greeted with a pretty menu asking me if I wanted to boot Mandrake or Windows.

you can try out a live cd distro like Mepis (www.mepis.org)

just pop in the cd and it boots up, no install required, just to test the waters. if you like it there's an install button on the desktop and it takes you through partitioning the drive and setting up grub.

Quote: Original post by Chalma
2)do I need a linux swap partion? if I do do I need to partition my hd 3 times?(once for linux, one for fat32, other for linux swap?)

I would suggest at least four partitions: Linux swap, Linux root (/), Linux /home, and FAT32. The reason why I suggest creating a separate /home partition is that if something should go wrong with the root partition, the /home partition remains. This makes it very easy to install another distribution if you so desire—just zap the root partition of the extant distro, install another, and mount the same /home partition! For this reason, I keep the filesystem on my /home partition something generic (I use ext3; I like journalling filesystems), even though I use ReiserFS on /.

Quote:
3)lets say I pick some mom-and-pop distro as my linux and I decide that sucks, I want something else to be the linux, what exactly is changing? do I have to mess with the MBR again? how do I change the grub settings without actually reinstalling a distro?

As long as you can access your boot partition (/boot could be on your root partition), you can edit grub.conf. Any Linux LiveCD should be able to do this easily.

My personal experience:

I installed Debian. Base install. That means that every time I wanted to do something, I had to learn about what program would allow me to do that. Text editing? Nano, vi, joe, etc. Logging in remotely? OpenSSH. File transfer? ftpd, proftpd, etc.

Eventually I learned how to setup XFree86 for a graphical desktop, and I then installed things like fluxbox (I prefer smaller and faster to features from KDE/Gnome), Mozilla (now using Firefox mainly), Gedit, Knotes, etc.

Of course, that's my personal experience. My goal was to get familiar with the command line (learning how to use pipes, grep, etc), so that worked for me. I knew exactly what was on my system since I had to install it when I wanted it rather than finding out about it after the fact.

Other people might not appreciate the slowness of this. Knoppix and other live CDs are probably good for seeing a nice desktop, but Fedora and Mandrake are supposed to be really nice.

For beginners, there is also Rute.
I found this to be a huge help in getting familiar with the system, especially if you are used to a Windows world.

Quote: Original post by Chalma
using grub I have the following code

There are a few errors in that code (makeactive, kernel). Use root instead of rootnoverify when loading linux.

Quote: 2)do I need a linux swap partion? if I do do I need to partition my hd 3 times?(once for linux, one for fat32, other for linux swap?)

Yes, you do.

The way I have things set up:

/dev/hda1   32M  ext2    /boot/dev/hda2  512M  swap/dev/hda3   76G  reiser  //dev/hdc1   17G  NTFS    /win/c   /dev/hdc5   18G  NTFS    /win/d

I don't have a separate partition for /home, nor a shared FAT32 (I primarily use linux nowadays), though Miserable's advice is sound. I did give Linux (read-only) access to my windows partitions - there's no need to bother hiding them, if you don't mount them, Linux won't touch them. Automated-install distros might detect them and install the appropriate kernel modules and mount points for you anyway.

Quote: 3)lets say I pick some mom-and-pop distro as my linux and I decide that sucks, I want something else to be the linux, what exactly is changing? do I have to mess with the MBR again? how do I change the grub settings without actually reinstalling a distro?

Depends on the distro. You could preserve your /home partition, and possibly your /boot partition (which holds the kernel and GRUB config). You'd wipe the root partition clean (keeps things simple) and install the new distribution over it. Swap, being swap, can stay as-is.

Quote: 4)can I continue leaving the linux portion of the startup code blank until I decide on a linux OS to install?

Typically, GRUB is setup as part of the install process, so you would not set it up 'in advance'. That being said, yes, you only have to fill the entries for the OS you are using. All you'll need is to have a partition on which to store the GRUB config files. You can have any number of entries, loading windows, different linux kernels, BSD, etc. You just have to point your root and boot in the right direction.

Quote: 5)if I totally screw this up can I get my original settings back.

Depends on what you screw up and what settings you're talking about. Your windows disk is safe, and any OS installer can wipe out your linux disk clean if necessary. You can also comment out entries in the GRUB config file ( the comment character is # ) for when you are experimenting. Repartitioning is always a bit tense.

Quote: I did a google and they want me to compile things or change settings and frankly the code is stuff I don't recognize for my compiler to do or they want me to change a bunch of settings and run off into linux commands that I don't know how to do much less execute. Thanks A TON, again

Re-compiling your kernel is not a big deal. It is true that Gentoo does compile a lot of things (like... everything). It's a good opportunity to learn what those command do. But I understand you'll probably want something with an automated install (SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat ...).
Or, as I first mentioned, you can use a LiveCD linux distribution (like Knoppix), which runs *everything* from the CD, leaving nothing on your disk - which, yes, can be a bit of a hassle to save anything as jflanglois points out - especially if all you have to write to is a read-only NTFS partition [smile]. Or Cygwin, which does give you a linux-like environment under Windows.

That way, you can figure out what those commands are about :)

I got the partitions up and running. I even was able to edit grub to my specifications. however when I installed mandrake 10.1 it seems like it will load but then fools me by going into a text prompt. the only GUI I have is this star with mandrake in the lower right hand corner LOL. I do a dir and there is just a tmp directory (is this normal?

I did a little research and i discovered "startX" but when I type that I recieve

execve failed for /etc/xii/x (error 2)
x init: no such file or dierectory(error 2):unable to connect to x server no such process (error 3)

having a bit of problems with the graphics (it won't install says xorg can't, I have an NVIDIA geforce fx 5500 256 or 128MB ram and is 8x agp). I did some more searching and found a driver for linux NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-6111-pkgz.run I took the liberty of downloading this file onto my E drive (the fat32 partition of my hard drive. in the linux window I tried sh /mnt/win_c/"that long file name" but no success, I went back to windows and renamed that file nvidia.run. but still to no avail. I can't even get it to run, do I have the right command? thinking that maybe I needed to goto that directory I did a cd /mnt/win_c/ but linux just tells me YES it is a directory (score one for noobie me).

My only option I have at this point is to redownload mandrake cd's (the 3rd one was giving me problems) but from there I am out of ideas.

I cannot believe I even got this far, so thank you for everyones help. If you know what I'm doing wrong or have some other commands please post 'em up. Keep in mind I am a total noob (I know DOS like the back of my hand, but anything linux I don't) I find alot of "tutorials" that tell me to logg onto a shell or mount this or change that, so if you post do it newbie style. Thanks again so much

I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, but you can do a couple of diagnostic things and post the results here it might help us help you :)

A couple of basic shell tips:
1. <tab> is your friend, type the first couple of letters of a command or filename, and <tab> will list the available completions.

2. man command - man stands for manual, sometimes these get a bit long, so try

3. command --help - usually prints out short usage guide for the command

I get the feeling the fat32 drive isnt mounted automatically, try typing 'mount' and you should get a list of mounted paritions like:

/dev/hda2 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev type ramfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
/dev/hda3 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime)


Look for your drive. If its not there, go:
mount /mnt/win_c

then try running your nvidia installer:
sh /mnt/win_c/nvidia.sh


good luck.

-oddbot

Did you say that you can't install xorg? (I'm uncertain what that statement meant)