What do I do first?

[audiyoda]

Okay, I want to set up a dual boot of Win98se and Linux. Big problem -- I've never used Linux. Bigger problem -- I have no clue how to set up a dual boot. So.....

1) How do I do the dual boot thing? I've got no partitions on my drive currently, but I have PM6 ready to go so I don't see a problem setting up the partitions.

2) Which version of Linux? What is the most 'user-friendly' version in everyones opinion. I've asked around campus and it's 50/50 between RedHat and Mandrake.

I'm sure I'll hav emore questions as I go along.

-Craig

[mairving]

Yoda, I have installed RedHat 7.0, Mandrake 7.0, 7.1 ,7.2. The only one that gave me a problem was 7.2. Not sure what happened there. I would say go with Mandrake. It has the easiest install and is the prettiest. It works best if you put Linux on a separate hard drive, the slave drive. But you can use partition magic and make some space at the end of your existing hard drive. I would say make about 3GB's.

You might post back here with your system specs for us to see if everything is compatible. Get you a good book too, like O'Reilly's Running Linux. Good luck

[Floppyman]

I used to have Red Hat 7 installed and it worked pretty well. The install went pretty smooth except that it didn't support my promise ATA/100 card. Plus I had some fdisk problems(couldn't remove linux partitions) when I wanted to repartition my whole drive. I think I had to run setup and remove them manually and then just quit the setup.

[audiyoda]

System specs:
Athlon 1Gig oc'ed to 1.4Gig
512 Meg PC133 CAS2 RAM
ASUS A7V133 mobo with Award bios
SB Live! Platinum (not 5.1)
ATI A-I-W 128 AGP Video card
Pinnacle Systems DC30Pro video capture card
SEK'D Siena Digital Audio card
Linksys LX100 v.4 NIC
Linksys BEFSR81 8 port router
Creative ModemBlaster Winmodem (used when I need to dial directly into MSU or when my dsl goes down)

I'm pretty sure the audio/video specific stuff won't have Linux drivers -- I don't plan on using them in that capacity.

-Craig

[Xayd]

The nic should work "out of the box" if you install a distro such as Mandrake or Red Hat. Note that Red Hat 6.2 won't work out of the box with your CPU until the kernel is patched, though, it attempts to disable CPU identification when loading the kernel, and since Athlons have no built in CPU identification that it can find, you get the ever popular "kernel panic, tried to kill the idle task".

Since you have a router, with DHCP enabled I'm assuming, just set your network settings for DHCP during the install. If the router isn't working through DHCP, i.e. you have an IP specified in Windows, put in your IP during the install. You MUST specify DNS servers if your router doesn't have DNS functionality, and if it does you MUST specify the router as your DNS server(s). MSN I believe tries to assign DNS through a type of WINS/PPP setup, but that won't work if this is the case. Find a free DNS server to use if all else fails.

The Winmodem will be very iffy. Try http://www.linmodems.org It might work if it's a Rockwell HCF, I believe there are some drivers there for HCF chipsets.

The Platinum card will work as well, just need to get drivers from http://opensource.creative.com The Live drivers are unified kinda like nVidia drivers, just get the most recent EMU101K driver, and a simple 'make'/'make install' gets you going from there after you unzip it.

Not sure on the Radeon, never tried to use one with X, if all else fails the standard VGA mode will work until you can get some drivers working.


Xayd

[Statica]

SBLive is fine, and will work well. Thats just a Rage chipset video card right? All in Wonder 128? If so it works fine. and you can use pretty much every feature on the card. If you need help with it post here then can go into the howto's

Suggestion is that you wait a couple of weeks to get Linux, and then go for the new Mandrake [its in beta 2], you should benefit from the 2.4.xx kernels. Should have no probs with the athlon or the mobo after the 2.2.14 kernel onwards.

[Xayd]

Doh, yeah, it is a Rage isn't it.

Every time I see ATI I think Radeon, hehe.

Can you tell these Radeon people have me 'hmmmmm-ing' yet ?

Xayd

[lynchmob]

Let me say at the outset that my total experience with Linux has been limited to Mandrake 7.1.All I can do for you,is recount how I did my installation.
1. From Win98,I did a hdd scan with Norton DiskDoctor(you can do the same w/scandisk).
2. I then ran Speedisk(a defrag utility)
3. I used PartitionMagic 5 to set up an ext2 and swap partition.PM will prompt you to make a linux swap file and,depending on the amount of ram you have,suggest the proper size of the swap partition.
4. I used DriveImage to make backup cd-rs of all my windows partitions,just in case.
5.Before installation,I checked all my hardware against the Mandrake Hardware Compatibility List.Go into Win98 Device Manager>highlight computer>click print and get a system summary.
6. After checking h/w I restarted the computer and went into setup and verified that my cd-rom was the first boot device and,most importantly,that Plug N Play was disabled.I exited setup,saving the changes,rebooted the computer with the Linux installation cd in the cd-rom.
7. I chose to do an automatic install and besides being asked to choose a language,a keyboard ,at the end (and this is IMPORTANT!),you must designate where to install the bootloader:install it on MBR.
Everything on my system worked and Xwindows configured itself pretty well considering the Voodoo card is iffy on any O/S. You'll want to get the dns names and mail and news server names from your ISP in order to configure kppp so you can go online but there is a good doc called the "kppp handbook" that will help alot in setting up your internet.
Hope that this helps and Im sure if I've forgotten anything, the others on this board will say so.
Good luck.
lynch