Linux for n00bs, by n00bs!
by krazykrakr01

Linux Install:

Put in the install disk in the cd/dvd drive and once the cd has booted you will be asked if you want to change the keyboard layout from the default. If you do not need to change it press the arrow down to start and start the install. It will display that it found the media on /dev/cd and ask you if it is the right one. Answer yes and it will bring up a menu with various options. If there is a read me option, READ IT! The first thing you learn about linux is that the read me file is your friend. Sometimes your best friend.

Back on the install menu, choose fdisk. One of the options might be resize, but we already did that back in windows (I believe this is much safer as you never know what windows is going to do if you resize it with another tool), if you didn't, you can try using this but I have never used it. So we will be going into fdisk or whatever partition tool is on the installer. It will ask us if we want to start with zero or with the existing partition table. We want to start with the existing partition table. If you have more than one drive it will ask you which one you want to use. hda will be the primary drive on ide0. hdb will be the drive that is on the slave of ide0 or the primary of ide1(depending on how your computer is set up). If you have three drives the slave on ide0 will be hdb and the primary on ide1 will be hdd(depending on if you have the cd hooked up as the master or the slave. If thecd is the slave to your drive on ide1, the harddriveshould be hdc, but that is just theory to me at this time). Once in the partition tool we should see a primary partition with windows on it. It should be easy to spot because the file system is either ntfs or fat. You will probably have a boot partition but we are going to leave both of those alone and make a new primary partition out of the free space. You can only have 4 primary partitions on a harddrive. That is called a legacy number (whatever the hell that is). Windows uses one primary partition and the boot counts as one also I believe, but am unsure. That leaves you at least two to make. The first one you make out of FREE SPACE is the linux swap partition. This is where linux can write stuff to the harddrive if your memory starts to fill up. A life saver on old equipment. It is recomended that you put twice the installed RAM to get best results. Once you have made the new partition you want to highlight the new partition and navigate to type and press enter. You will be presented with all the choices and if you are using fdisk you want to make it #83. Linux Swap. Then press enter.

Then you can make a 5-10 GB partition with fat32. You may have to do the root partition in the next section first and make this a logical partition. I'm not sure. Make this one fat32 the same way you made the swap partition by finding fat32 on the list and putting in the corresponding number. The fat32 partition is so you can store your saved emails, reciepts, pictures, videos, and just about anything but software and be able to access it in windows and linux. It's best to stick with fat32 because I've read some nightmare stories about windows freaking out when linux writes to a ntfs file system. It's better to be safe than sorry and it's just static data. You don't run anything from that partition.

Next you will highlight the free space again and put everything else in a primary partition (I will cover advanced partitioning in another article). Once you have made the primary linux partition, if it is the only operating system on the harddrive you have to flag it as bootable. Just press enter on bootable. It would probably be a good idea to write down a list of the drive letters and a little hint to help you remember which one is which because it can get confusing sometimes. Once that is done you will write the partition table to disk (this is different than writing it to a piece of paper like you just did. LOL). It will ask for confirmation and try to scare you out of it but JUST DO IT! (I've learned just about everything I know about computers from that statement. LOL). Then it will ask you to reboot to make the changes. Do so and when you reboot you will go back to the beginning of the cd and have to navigate back to here.

Now back on the menu you chose the partition tool off of, choose install. Once you press enter you will be asked if you want to check the files that will be installed. If this is the first time you have used this cd it is recomended that you do this. It takes a little bit of time but it will save you alot of time if the files are bad. If you installed bad files in the install, I can only imagine the pain it would be. Just use the space bar to check and uncheck the files.