On 10/09/10 03:30, Doug wrote:
I just downloaded debian-testing i386 Net Inst and burned the .iso onto disk. Before I do something silly, I want to make sure that this is designed to live with other os's on the hd. (I rememberone older version of Ubuntu that took over the drive, and wiped everything else out.) If everything is copacetic, I'll put iton my laptop along with Win XP and PcLinuxOs. Please advise. thanx--doug
DougYes, the Debian distro will play nicely with your other OS's and will - if you work carefully with the partition manager - recognise the other OSs on the HD and accommodate to their space requirements.
Windows will automatically wipe the entire HD clean during installation, whereas Debian will ask you about keeping other OSs on the drive. I cannot comment on PCLinuxOS though. The trick is, as others have commented, to go through the disk partition stage of installation *very* carefully. This process is often aided by having a basic knowledge of the config parameters of your HD so that you don't inadvertently try to install on cylinders that have already been taken.
There may be an option for you to look at sharing your PCLinuxOS /home directory with the Debian install, but there are gurus here who could advise on that because I have no experience in actually moving beyond the theory.
Bottom line? Debian will play nicely with other distros/ OSs but installer beware: know what you are doing when messing with the disk partitioning process.
AG