Re: GNU-LINUX Installation!
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 20:15:54 -0800 (PST), Shawn Lamson
<madzimambo@yahoo.com> wrote:
>--- Samaad Story <kadiz79@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello guys i am familiar with computers etc, But I am not at all
>> familiar with installing Linux. Im am not to sure about the
>> partitioning of the hard drive, the bios, and basically the entire
>> process of installing this OS. I have some of the information on your
>> web site but still am a little confused, if you can help it would be
>> of a great service to me. Also if you have any great books that you
>> can think of that would better my knowledge of Linux it would be
>> greatly appreciated as well. Thank you for your time.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Samaad Story
>>
>I would recommend just diving right in - there is no way you will get
>it right the first time anyway - i dont care if you had the top 10
>books on Linux at your fingertips! Just don't do it on an essential
>part of your system :)
>Shawn
>
I wouldn't recommend diving right in if you're not sure about
partitioning the hard drive - too much potential to screw up your
existing system!
I would recommend getting another hard drive and fitting it as your
primary master; make the existing primary master the primary slave.
Then you can muck about with the partitions on the primary master as
much as you want without trashing anything. You can put both the Linux
main partition and the swap partition on the primary master (not ideal
for performance but safer for experimenting), and install Linux to the
primary master. The actual installation is not that hard; make sure
you've got details of your monitor's supported scan frequencies when
it comes to setting up X, although you can leave that till later if
you want.
With this setup you can go back to your original system by going into
the BIOS setup and telling it that there is no primary master hard
drive. It will then boot off the primary slave, which is your original
system.
Apart from this I think you can more or less ignore the BIOS as Linux
uses its own drivers to talk to the hardware and takes little notice
of BIOS settings.
The book "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" (pub. O'Reilly) was included with
my original Debian CD and was adequate to get it installed and
working.
Pigeon
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