Re: Which version?

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Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 21:16:20 -0500
To: Ethan Vos <ethan.vos@sympatico.ca>

Kent West wrote:

> Ethan Vos wrote:
>
>> Can I run this from a Win98 C: drive and install to a Linux D: or E:
>> drive?
>>
>> The instructions seem a little daunting...
>>
>> Ethan
>>
>> Robert Sheets wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 17:19:59 -0400, Ethan Vos
>>> <ethan.vos@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Good afternoon all.
>>>>
>>>> The mirrors that I have looked at have binary-1 through binary-7.
>>>> Which
>>>> is the correct one to use?
>>>
>>>
> The binary-1 CD has most of the commonly wanted software. The other
> CDs have additional software, but you can start out with the first one
> and get the other stuff as needed/desired (either by downloading and
> using the extra CDs, or better still, just directly downloading the
> various packages).
>
> Concerning your second question (which was top-posted, a practice
> frowned upon on this list; instead, post your responses so anybody can
> come in six months later and start reading the post at the top and
> understand what's going on in the conversation):
>
> Debian is a completely different animal than Windows; it requires its
> own partitions and/or drives. I assume by your question that you
> already have a D: and E: partition and/or drive. Yes, Linux can be
> installed on those partitions/drives, but they'll have to be
> repartitioned/reformatted, and they'll essentially become invisible to
> Windows. The names "D:" and "E:" will no longer apply; that's strictly
> a Microsoft invention.
>
> Rather than running from the Win98 C: drive, you'll probably want to
> boot off the binary-1 CD, and install it from the CD to what you
> currently are calling D: and/or E: (wiping out any data on those
> partitions/drives in the process). Normally this won't affect your
> current Windows setup, but if you don't understand partitioning, you
> can make a mistake and wipe your Windows setup completely. So either
> make sure you know what you're doing, or make a backup of the entire
> Windows drive first (which is a good idea anyway).
>
> If D: and E: are separate drives and not just separate partitions, you
> might feel more comfortable unplugging the data/power cable from the
> C: drive to make sure nothing happens to it during the install. The
> problem with that is that because of the way the boot-up process gets
> installed, your machine probably won't be able to boot into Debian
> after the install (I'm assuming that since you have Win98 you have an
> older machine that expects to boot off the first drive on IDE0), or if
> it does, you'll find you can't boot Windows after the install without
> some tweaking on the Debian side.
>
> My suggestion to you is to make sure you understand the installation
> instructions, which seem a little daunting, or decided to do away with
> Win98 completely for now until you've had some experience with Debian,
> or to get your feet wet with a Knoppix CD (http://www.knoppix.org)
> instead of installing Debian to your machine. The Knoppix CD lets you
> boot off the CD into a fully-functioning Linux environment, and then
> when you exit out of Knoppix and remove the CD and reboot you're back
> in Win98 like Knoppix never existed. It's considerably slower than a
> real Linux installation (since everything's running off the CD), but
> it's a good way to introduce yourself to Linux.

    Before I installed Debian on my Gateway 500 I had only a 12 GB hard
drive. I installed more system memory and installed a second hard
drive. I read the installation guide off Debian.org and made notes on
all the stuff attached to the computer such as COM ports, the type of
printers, graphic card, modem type, floppy drive, ZIP drive, etc. I
also read a couple of books about Linux: Running Linux, 3rd Edition
(BTW, the fourth edition is out), and Linux Cookbook. Both of these are
listed on Debian.org. In the Linux Cookbook, be sure to read the
section about the virtual consoles. Once installed, my Linux boots into
the GUI. Ctrl_ALT-Fx (where x is a number from 1 to 6 inclusive) will
get the user into one of the virtual consoles. On my system then
Ctrl-Alt_Del will reboot the system, (but the GUI screen will capture
those keys). Rebooting the system allows you to get back to the LILO menu.

    I used a utility from the vendor that made the second hard drive to
set up the partitions and to format it. From the installation guide I
know that I wanted a large partition or partitions for the root system
and data areas. I also set up a small partition to use as the swap
partition. On your Windows boot diskette you should have Fdisk. If you
accidentally destroy your MBR, remember that fdisk /MBR will restore
the Master Boot Record. When you answer questions about the X sessions,
it might be a good idea to choose medium or simple. The advanced
selection is for those hardware gurus whose equipment is so specialized
that only God and they know what the parameters are. This section is
where you answer questions about the graphics card, type of mouse,
keyboard, etc.. You may wish to know whether you want gdm, tdm, or xdm
as your windows manager. You'll have to ask the others here about those
choices. I just chose the first one off the list.

    Then I was ready to install Linux. The boot CDROM gave me a choice
of kernels. I had to choose bf2.4 because that was the only option that
could see my hard drives. The program cfdisk was used only to
initialize those partitions on the second drive that I had decided would
be Linux. Those partitions will 'disappear' from your Windows Explorer
or whatever you use for a file manager. The installation CDROMs let me
put LILO onto the MBR. Now when I boot, I have a choice between Windows
98SE and Linux. You can customize the LILO menu, but you can save that
question until after installation. I needed to 'wife-proof' my menu to
let the machine boot automatically into Windows after a delay.

(Mr.) Gayle Lee Fairless
Linux Gcomm 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 unknown

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• Previous message: Brandon High: "Re: wput? automatic ftp login/upload?"
• Maybe in reply to: Ethan Vos: "Which version?"
• Next in thread: Allen Williams: "RE: "sarge" install: "Install base system" bombs and disk errors(?)"
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