Installation help

[solarian]

Just one advice from me. I suggest you still make a seperate /home partition.

Why? Because if something goes wrong in the OS, it's ~95% your private data won't be affected. If home is a part of the main root / then if anything goes, it all goes.

 

It has saved me a lot of nerve cells and time in having a seperate /home partition. Actually I would have lost about 3 years of my work if it weren't for a seperate /home. (since then I upload all work to a gmail account too)

Thus I suggest everyone to have a seperate /home (if it's possible).

Edited May 6, 2005 by solarian

[ianw1974]

This is true in case you need to rebuild.

 

If you're just mucking around with Linux and unlikely to have data there, then just two partitions would be fine.

 

So, if you're planning on keeping the install as a permanent thing have /, HOME and SWAP partitions.

 

Mine is just / and Swap, but then I just mess around with it mostly on my laptop. My desktop has the 3 partitions because its a permanent solution! The laptop is for learning, rebuilding again and again if things go pear-shaped. Bit like a testing system perhaps!! :P

[Guest kn_san540]

Yes you could install Mandrake onto what is now your spare D:\ partition

When you commence the install, choose the "expert" choice so you can repartition that partition and thus be able to divide it so that you have approx 500mb partition for /swap and about 750mb for a /home and the remainder for root which is /   . However you have   /   then   /swap   then  /home   in that order. All three need to be reformatted to ext3 rather than native.

When you do your install, I recommend you choose    GRUB   as your boot loader and choose to install the bootloader to the MBR. 

When you reboot you will see your windows and your Mandrake listed and it will be just a matter of clicking which one you want to enter.

 

Note that Windows will no longer see that former D:\ partition.  This is a start.

 

May I seriously suggest that you install the Mandrake 10.1Official Edition rather than the Community Edition which did have a few problems that were eliminated in the Official Edition

 

Please let me know how you progress.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dear John

 

Thanks for all the help needed to install Mandrake Linux 10.1

Installation was a breeze.........Simply gr8

I followed what all U told me and my system is working gr8.

LINUX is faster than I thought and more faaster than WIndows xp

May be 256 MB RAM instead of 128 MB will make it smoother.

 

I got help of some documentation from the site

 

http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/MandrakeLinux.../en/Starter.pdf

 

http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/MandrakeLinux...ommand-Line.pdf

 

These two files helped a lot for me. mainly starter.pdf

 

My DAD who is a UNIX Expert and has an experience of 15 years helped me in getting

things right

 

Due to some confusion I got mandrake Linux 10.1 Community Edition

downloaded instead of Official Edition......will it cause any trouble

Actully my DAD who works in a Company has a Superfast highend broadband connection

and I told him to get this one, insteat he got me community edition.

 

I am taking time to get acquinted with it and learn some commands, Due U still suggest

me to install Official edition or the new one Mandriva LE2005

 

My Modem Motorola SM56 PCI Internal modem is not recognized by the system

and I am not able to connect to the internet via linux

 

THe documentation told me that winmodems and softmodems have some

problem to install

Where do i get the drivers for it and how to install ....Can U please help

 

once again thanks John

 

Bye

[adamw]

10.1 CE did have some bugs, so updated to OE or 2005 would be a good idea, yes. You can get the CDs downloaded and do an upgrade, or

you can convert CE into OE with urpmi, the MDK package manager. You'd need your internet connection working first, though. Motorola have a driver for that modem, but only on MDK 10.0; I haven't used a modem in, oh, five years or so, so I'm not the best person to advise you on using one now :). Anyone else have experience with this modem?

 

Once you have a working internet connection, you can do this:

 

Go here:

 

http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

 

Select 10.1 Official as your version and hit 'proceed to stage 2'. Check the boxes marked 'main' and 'contrib' and select mirror sites for these two from the drop-down box; I'd suggest Proxad or Anorien as good mirrors. Hit 'proceed to stage 3'.

 

Open a console and become root (type su, hit enter, enter your root password and hit enter). Now copy and paste the commands from the Easy URPMI page into the console (and wait a while, especially on a modem line, for the 20MB downloads). Finally, do this:

 

urpmi --auto-select --keep -v

 

And follow along.

 

If you really have trouble with your modem, the easiest thing to do is get a proper hardware modem; these are much easier to get working. A proper external hardware modem shouldn't cost more than $20-$30 these days, I don't think.

[AussieJohn]

I am pleased for you that my suggestions may have helped you.

It was a pleasure.

As ADAMW says. This gentleman gives a lot of very very good advice.

 

If you have access, via your Dad, then by all means go for the Mandriva2005LE 'cause it works just great. It uses KDE3.3 as well (10.1 still used kde3.2) and has some extra neat little enhancements that may not be show stoppers but make using that bit nicer.

 

Yes go for Mandriva2005LE.

 

Cheers. John.

[Arne]

Hello AussieJohn,

You remember me from some days ago?

After several installation tries I have finally got Mandrake 10.1 up working. I did choose to delete every thing about windows 98SE and dedicate the PC to Linux. With 5MB I think I have nice setup. The notebook is an old machine from 1998. The main problem was to find the right graphic setting for my laptop screen.

 

Having sad that what a nice system Mandrake has made. The graphic is stunning and I like it a lot. I have not got it under my skin yet but I am impressed with the logic and user friendliness. I have got my optical mouse and the USB working, but the mouse wheel do not work.

 

No the struggling starts. Install modem and printer. After 2 days still not lucky. I will fix it because I don't give up easily.

 

Thank you for help and advice. I may turn into an addict.

Arne

[Guest kn_san540]

Dera Arne its nice that U got ur system working, I am also struggling with the problem of configuring some devices like Modem, mine is internal Motorola SM56

and of the member adamw gave me suggestion to change the modem. But what I think that $20-30 means a lot to me, I live in a country like India where everything seems premium for us, So changing hardware for software is not for me.

 

And that too internal Modem , by some time will become obselute and that all of us here are planning to switch to Broadband with a normal investment in the near future.

[Arne]

Hello KN-san540

I would rather prefer to use the internal modem since I have linux on Thinkpad and it's not nice to carry an external modem around. I am lucky since I have a extrnal Robotics fac modem 56K also and can plug that in if I cannot get my internal Mwave/ACP modem (Mwave 3780i DSP) working.

I have posted reply under hardvare forum and I hope to get some feedback on the modem problem. I cannot get a decent fixed phone line where I live so broadband is the blue for me. Good luck to you