[SC.LUG] Dual Boot Machines

[Neil Lucock]

On Thursday 10 Jan 1980 8:59 pm, Matthew Tolley wrote:
> Smashing,
>
> Thanks!
>
> SO if I get a new CD, how do I do it?
>
Set the BIOS to boot from the CD as a first choice. Boot the machine with the 
CD in the drive, most distros provide some means of making new partitions on 
your hard drive, Mandrake's Diskdrake is particularly good. Read the 
documentation before you make any changes and back up essential data. I've 
never lost data after resizing partitions, but it is possible. You'll need 
about 1.5 gb for a generous installation (with KDE/Gnome and a good selection 
of tools). I make three partitions, a / (root) partition for the OS, a /home 
patition for user files and a swap partition, but it will work with a / and 
swap. 
Once you've decided on your partitions, the CD will offer to install the 
system. Some distributions install a group of programs according to the 
general choices you make, so "multimedia" will give you CD players, 
recorders, video and sound utilities, Mandrake does this but you can select 
exactly what you want, I think SuSE does too. Ensure you make it resolve 
dependencies so that everything works.
 Configure video, sound and resolution (it should autodetect it) and choose 
default desktop and make a user account for yourself. It will reboot and you 
will have to do some minor configuration tasks (like colour schemes for the 
desktop).
It's easier than installing Windows (less rebooting) but if you've not got 
much experiance, get someone to help

Neil