As I have posted before I'll be getting a HP Pavilion xh575 laptop for xmas. However I will be away from anything closely resembling an internet conncetion from about Dec. 19th to the 30th or so. Since I can't wait to get my hot little hands on Linux and finally experiance what I have been reading about in books and on-line for the past several years.

I'm looking to install Mandrake 8.1 or RH 7.2. I'll have access to the tools inherant to these two distros and Partion Magic 7. The computer comes default with Windows XP home, however I plan on upgrading that to Professional nearly imedately. Since I won't have access to the internet until the 30th, I'm hoping to have a few CD's already made that will contain all the required information.

I'm looking for a Howto that will give me a step by step directions, a hold my hand-type if you will. My final desire is to have XP Professional running on a 2 gb OS partition (NTFS), a 4 gb Application Partion for windows (NTFS), a total of 3 gb for Linux (ext 2?) this will include Linux swap and other necessay partitions. The remaining 10-20 gb of HD space will be a FAT partion so I can store datafiles that can be accessed by both OSes.

What kind of info do I need to have handy in order to get this thing to go as flawlessly as possible? Where would I find such a guide?

I have Linux for dummies by John "maddog" Hall that I picked up in early 99, whihc has 3 chapters devoted to installing Red Hat Linux 5.1(?). Has much changed in the intervening 3 years to warrent looking for something else?

Any and all help is appreciated.

-Ny

5.1 of red hat is much too old so I think the first stop is here at The Linux Documentation Project . After that, I would search the forums for a post by someone (can't remember the name) who says he's written a comprehensive WindowsXP/Linux dual boot install manual/How-To.

"maddog" is one of the great UNIX era patrons of Linux. I have that book somewhere. However, 3 months in the open source world is an age and a half, so 3 years is somewhat of an eon ago. There probably isn't a book published yet that's worth a dink in helping you with the partition and boot issues involved in doing the XP/Linux dual boot setup, but its pretty much the exact same as a 2k/Linux setup anyway. RH 7.2 will default to Ext3 as its file system, although you can very easily tell it Ext2. Mandrake takes a little more convincing to tell it Ext2 instead of ReiserFS(the other journaling file system). I had a fight with Reiser once and we haven't been on good terms since. It sacked a nifty Mp3 library. Ext3 is pretty lovely, and the conversion from 2 to 3 is rather smooth.

I'm babbling. Anyway, look into trying to snag the O'Reilly "Running Linux" as a stocking stuffer. Its a little dated too, but its almost in-arguably the perfect starting tome for the moderately capable. Basically, if you graduated High School, you can handle it.

The other upshot to RedHat, and this always makes me cringe as a fan of Slackware, is that you can find about a million very solid books about it these days, so its probably a little easier to start from than Drake.

Cheers,

FInegan