[jj33189]

hey
i have a P4 1300 MHz with a 20 gig hard drive and 128 DDR RAM. I want to put Mandrake LInux on my system and run it as a secondary one to my Windows XP pro. Ive never even touched Linux before and i want to learn to get the new experience. Ive heard good things about Linux, esp. Mandrake since its supposed to be the best for Noobs (correct me if im wrong). I have the .iso Images on my system and im burning them right now... i would reallly appreciate some advice on this and maybe walk me through the installation ( the hard things ). And do I have to partition the HD or does it do it for me.. and is it possible for me to run dual Os's with my HDD. I have about 16 GB free.. I would really appreciate the help...
Thanks
JJ

[nak-1]

... do, DO NOT partition your hard drive until you back up all the files on your computer you want to keep. I have never used mandrake, only debian, so I don't have any specific advice to give you.

However people have told me that your best off installing XP first and then your linux distro, otherwise you run into all sorts of problems...

[horndude]

Definitely back up your stuff........try I think its called partition magic to shrink current windows partition,not sure if that can be done with NFS or not.If so, you wont have to reinstall windows.Just be warned, windows filesystems typically spread stuff all over a drive.......not contiguous like linux.

Not sure how mandrake does it but you will probably have to make a linux and linux swap partition, after that mandrake should install with just a few prompts and questions.LILO or grub should be easliy set up to give a boot choice at system start.......with slackware linux it does that on its own usually.