TheSquire

Well I guess I will try another distribution. Thanks for the effort guys! Take care. Christoph

Ya, newbie here. I forgot...sorry. It's a P4 2ghz and 768mb ram. 80gb harddrive - partitions: C: ntfs; a linux swap 800mb; linux ext3 10gb; D: ntfs; E: ntfs gateway oem intel d845grg mb and ami bios Mandrake 10 Official, downloaded just a few fays ago. I boot with the CD, the first screen appears asking me to hit enter or f1 for more options. Hitting enter starts the installation process, displays some stuff that I don't understand (I can get it for you if you need all of it), ending with "kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on ram3" The line before tells me something about EDD and asks me to send a report to linux.dell.com/edd/reports.html. Looking on there didn't bring me anywhere since I don't know what all that means. Aparrently it's some Bios Enhanced Disk Drive thing, whatever that means. Details here: http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml Thanks for all your help!

anyone? I tried to run knoppix 3.3, which has a 2.44 kernel version, and it worked fine. Can anyone tell me what the problem might be? Should I try another distribution?

I get that error message with a kernel panic. The line before asks me to report something EDD to http://linux.dell.com/edd/report.html I went there and it didn't make too much sense to me. Any suggestions? Thanks!

...yes...is that bad?

I guess I am too used to Windows, I wasn't aware that, once your RAM is full, it might not be too good for your linux.... Anyway, I did make a 800mb swap partition for my 768mb ram, so it should be all good ;)

I have 768mb RAM.....still need a swap partition?

Do I also need to create a swap partition for my linux installation? So I need a ext3 and a swap one, right? My ext3 has to be primary also, what about the swap?

Thank you very much! I will look for one. Christoph

I don't want to buy or pirate it. Is there a free alternative?

Can you recommend a partitioning program? Will fdisk work? I'd hate to lose my data.... And how big do you think should that partition be? 10gb? I plan on doing some GIMP,Blender,OpenOffice and a little bit of internet stuff.

Hello! I searched the forum for this, but couldn't find anything...so here goes my question: I read in the Mandrake Docs that you can install it on the free space of the partition that has Windows XP on it. What about another partition that doesn't have windows xp or any other OS on it? Can I install it on that free space? The alternative would be making a new fourth partition (I already have 3) out of the free space of the existing third. Can I do that during the installation of Mandrake or should I use a partition tool before installing Mandrake and do that? If so, what program do you guys recommend? I know Partition Magic is very good, but I don't want to buy or pirate it. Thanks alot!! Christoph