Pre Newbie questions here

[da_moma]

Hi Everyone :wave:
Windows is driving me batty :dizzy: if not for the programs that I rely on daily (too costly to replace) I would ditch it all together.

But I bought this cd to try called PCLinuxOS Live CD

It of course came with no instructions, I went to www.pclinuxonline.com found the forums read and read and read...

Still have no clue where to safely begin so I thought I better ask.

I have these questions:

1) I was told I could do a dual boot if I choose to install pclinuxOS is this correct?

2) I have a partition overlay on my current hard drive that is 40.G for that one and the main partition of this HD that I run windows is in has 101G left.

Question is can I install this onto the partitioned off 40G partition?
Would that be a wise thing to do?

3) Can anyone please tell me where to begin with this, who will not mind questions when I get a free break to ask.

I am very much looking forward to another alternative to windows, especially for online use.

Thank you,

[JoeC0180]

Well I have never used PCLinuxOS so I am guessing that the live cd also funtions as the installation cd. It is possible to dual boot both linux and windows and a 40G partition will be fine.

The best place to begin I would say is just to run the installer and see how it goes. It would be a good idea to back up any data you might need before trying to install linux just incase something goes wrong.

Hopefully this helps a little and feel free to ask any questions you like!

Good Luck!

[da_moma]

Well I have never used PCLinuxOS so I am guessing that the live cd also funtions as the installation cd. It is possible to dual boot both linux and windows and a 40G partition will be fine.

The best place to begin I would say is just to run the installer and see how it goes. It would be a good idea to back up any data you might need before trying to install linux just incase something goes wrong.

Hopefully this helps a little and feel free to ask any questions you like!

Good Luck!


Thank you so much for your reply.
The 40G partition is already on my hard drive as an overlay, my system would not take my hard drive in full when we installed her with out the overlay.

Thanks for letting me ask questions cause I truly am looking forward to this and need the help.

Yes I assume it does have an installer, Terrible I know but all I know for sure is that I can look at the cd when I boot off it or choose to install it according to the lady I bought it from.

My question would be how to know I am installing it to the partitioned off overlay and not my windows area instead, would I type in the letter for the overlay spot like I would when I installed windows on the c drive?

I just want to be sure I do this correctly and thanks again very much!

[JoeC0180]

Well I myself have never dual booted and am not familiar with the overlay so maybe someone else will jump in that knows a bit more than me.

It sounds like the 40 gig partition is a separate partition so when you run the disk partitioner in the installer it should recognize the windows partition and the free space. You are going to want to format the free space for your linux os. You will need to make at least a root partition and a swap partition. A lot of people like to have a separte partion for there /home file as well but that is not required.

Your swap section doesnt have to be very big, basically just make it whatever the amount of memory you have, if you 256mb of RAM, make a 256mb section for swap. And you will also have to change the swap partion type to swap.

Format the other sections in either ext3 or reiserfs.

Hopefully that helps, you may also want to take a look at this link, it is the installion instructions from there website.

http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/html/installation.html

[da_moma]

JoeC0180 :wave:
Thank you ever so much.
Started my backups, will do that today it will take a while for sure then tomorrow try this.

Printed out the instructions, so we will see.
Hope You Have Great Day

[JoeC0180]

Your welcome da_moma and Good Luck with it. Once you get it set up you will love it.

"Windows is driving me batty :dizzy: if not for the programs that I rely on daily (too costly to replace) I would ditch it all together."

I am not sure what programs you need but you will find that many windows programs have simalar programs in linux that often run just as well or better, and they are free! This isnt the case with every program but many of them.

"I am very much looking forward to another alternative to windows, especially for online use."

Linux is great for online use as you dont have to constantly be on the watch for random pieces of adware and spyware, which is always a great thing.

Anyways once again good luck and report back on how the install goes

[jmtjet]

You're doing the right thing by backing up your Windows data. The biggest problem with a dual boot is getting the boot loader in the right place on your drive. If you make a mistake you'll end up not being able to access your windows partition. Here's a tutorial for setting up a dual boot using GRUB as the boot loader with Windows XP. If you have an option when installing Linux as to which boot loader to use I would recommend GRUB over LiLo.

Tutorial;
http://www.devhood.com/tutorials/tutorial_details.aspx?tutorial_id=405

To avoid problems do your homework first.

[da_moma]

Your welcome da_moma and Good Luck with it. Once you get it set up you will love it.

"Windows is driving me batty :dizzy: if not for the programs that I rely on daily (too costly to replace) I would ditch it all together."

I am not sure what programs you need but you will find that many windows programs have simalar programs in linux that often run just as well or better, and they are free! This isnt the case with every program but many of them.

"I am very much looking forward to another alternative to windows, especially for online use."

Linux is great for online use as you dont have to constantly be on the watch for random pieces of adware and spyware, which is always a great thing.

Anyways once again good luck and report back on how the install goes

Hi JoeC0180,

Sorry it has taken a while to get back here, Holidays are always full for us.
We have decided to wait until after the holiday rush now, as my burner went out on me for good :hmm: so could not burn my backups....

System is acting squirrely (slower) I best try to tend to her as well.
I will post back here when we are ready to roll with Linux and how the install goes.

Programs are PSP-Adobe Items-Macromedia which is a huge time saver for me, those kind of things. I have tried GIMP on windows before, do not have it on here now.

Thank You

[da_moma]

You're doing the right thing by backing up your Windows data. The biggest problem with a dual boot is getting the boot loader in the right place on your drive. If you make a mistake you'll end up not being able to access your windows partition. Here's a tutorial for setting up a dual boot using GRUB as the boot loader with Windows XP. If you have an option when installing Linux as to which boot loader to use I would recommend GRUB over LiLo.

Tutorial;
http://www.devhood.com/tutorials/tutorial_details.aspx?tutorial_id=405

To avoid problems do your homework first.

Hi jmtjet,
Thank you for the information and confirmation very much!
Did not get to burn my backups as our burner died on me.
We should be getting back to this though after the New Year....I Pray!
I will keep you all posted and appreciate this very much and the links, I am printing things out and reading, re reading and reading some more!

I am currently running win 2000 pro as XP and I did not get along well.:hmm: