I'm waiting for my 9.0 to arrive, and im in a pickle. I have windoze on my system right now, and have no qualms about getting rid of it when i get linux. However I have a few items (mostly concerning mp3's) that i dont wish to get rid of.

Right now my system is partitioned into 3. c: being my windoze partition, my d: being for games, and my e: being for mp3's and apps. I have a few ways of going around this.
1: buying a new HD and making a dual boot off of two drives!
2: Dual booting off of the same 30 gig drive!
3: Forgetting the whole thing and just reformating and installing 9.0, giginig up my stock pile of mp3's

Now i know ill need a linux program to be able to share files from windoze file system and linux's file system. Thats no problem.


OK next question... I have my hardware currently patched with the highest drivers availible.... Im not worried about my geforce 4 because getting a driver off the nvidia site will not be a problem, but what about my sound card? i have a soundblaster live value... does thier site have linux drivers?

thanks in advance for replies

p.s sorry for the unorganized state of this post!

There is no reason why you can't boot from one drive with both Windows and LInux. To partition it for Linux, get the free Ranish Partition Manager from http://www.ranish.com . It will allow you to resize and move your Windows partitions to make room for Linux. Try to get at least 4 Gb of space for the Linux install. Do not bother formatting the area for Linux. It will be done when you partition Linux. Install Linux using expert install which will give you control over the partitioning. Partition for "/" root, "swap" and "home" as a minumum. See the partitioning page at http://www.mandrakeuser.org for more information.

Whether you decide to use a separate drive for Linux is entirely up to you and your wallet. The Mandrake install procedure will be quite happy either way. If this is your first experience with Linux, you may not want to dump Windows until you get some experience with Linux. Not being an MP3 person, I can't tell you whether you can access them from Linux or not.

Your sound card is supported by Mandrake Linux. Since you do not specify any other hardware, I can't speak to that. If you have an on board modem or other on board devices, there could be problems. Post again with your hardware list if you want advice about those.

Make a point of reading the Tutorial on your Install Disk 1, which is accessible from Windows. You will need to stop the CD from booting and then the directory of the CD will be visible.

Counterspy

Hi,

CounterSpy, you type a lot faster than me You everything I did! So yeah what he said!

dalee

Your MP3's will be readable under Linux.