On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 08:35, Jereme Hancock wrote:

I am a complete newbie to the Linux world. I have a Dell desktop with Windows XP. I would like to set up a dual boot system. I have PartitionMagic so I can shrink the XP partition, but I am really not sure how to do it. Can someone please walk me through the steps to shrink the XP partition and set up the partition for Linux and install Linux. Thanks in advance, Jereme

First, if you are new to the list welcome to the wonderful world of linux and this list. You will find a treasure trove of info here. I can't help with shrinking your XP partition as it should be fairly straight forward using PartitionMagic. At a minimum you will need two partitions for linux. One should be about two times the size of your ram, used for swap, and the other for your install. There are differing options on having other partitions for other filesystems such as /home and /boot, but to each their own. Make sure you backup any data in your XP partition before resizing. -- Ken Schneider unix user since 1989 linux user since 1994 SuSE user since 1998 (5.2) * PLEASE only reply to the list *

On Wednesday 25 August 2004 08:35 am, Jereme Hancock wrote:

I am a complete newbie to the Linux world. I have a Dell desktop with Windows XP. I would like to set up a dual boot system. I have PartitionMagic so I can shrink the XP partition, but I am really not sure how to do it. Can someone please walk me through the steps to shrink the XP partition and set up the partition for Linux and install Linux. Thanks in advance, Jereme

1) Shrink your XP partition. You will need anywhere from 3GB to 9GB left for linux. (8 would be nice for now) 2) Create 4 new partitions: a) linux swap - 800mb should be fine b) /home - 1GB (for your personal stuff. Size as needed) c) / (root) 6 or 7GB (for a pretty full install) d) /boot - 23mb for the booting kernel (format as ext2 and write down the order of the partitions) 3) Start the SuSE install but when it comes to the initial configuration screen, go through the: a) Time section and set your timezone and also set the clock to LOCAL time b) Software - select the software you want, keeping an eye on how full your root partition becomes. c) Most important, go into the partitioning section and 'discard' the current setup. Drill down to where it says 'for experts' (you are one aren't you?) and click on that. Here, since you've already set up all of your partitions for SUSE using PM, you only need to: 1) Tell the setup where to mount each of the partitions you created (such as /dev/hda7 as /home) 2) Tell the format how to format the partition. (avoid XFS for now since there is a bug in the install kernel. reiserfs would be good but keep /boot as ext2) 3) Let'r rip! (the installation) Others may argue about setting up the partitions and doing the install this way, but this is the way I do it and it has always worked well. Any questions? -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 08/25/04 09:33 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in."