Laptop choice, first boot issues
Hello. I'm thinking of buying a new laptop. I don't know much about the
subject (I've only had one old laptop, which I bought from a friend, and he
had already installed sid). From what I've learned googling, IBM Thinkpads
seem to be one of the best options. I live in Japan, and Japanese brands are
cheaper, but IBM looks like a safer bet.
Currently I'm considering R50, T41, T42 models, but I'm open to suggestions!
It will probably not be possible to buy a laptop without XP installed. I've
read that one has to be very careful when first booting, because Windows XP
converts the file system from VFAT to NTFS. There's also the issue of the
special "recovery" partition somewhere in the hard disk. And there's the
issue of hardware detection.
As I still don't have the big picture, my questions:
1. If I naively do a normal boot, then filesystem conversion will take
place, and I will not be able to (easily) resize partitions to make room for
Linux later? Or the only problem with NTFS is that they're read-only?
2. If I keep XP, then I also have to keep the "recovery" partition. Right?
3. If I keep XP, what would be a suitable partition size for it? I will not
really use it, just a backup in case I need to know about some hardware,
until I'm sure sid is working properly with all hardware.
4. A simpler alternative would be to boot first time with Knoppix, which
seems to do a very good job detecting hardware. Learn all I have to learn
with Knoppix, and then delete all partitions and start with a pure Debian
system. Any horror stories out there?
5. This recovery partition, is of use only to Windows? The "delete all
partitions" part above is safe if I intend to have Debian only?
Sorry for all the "if" questions, but I'm trying to get some advice and
information beforehand.
Regards,
Victor
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