[wellylug] laptop advice sought

[Jethro Carr]

On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 10:27, bob dugan wrote:
> I just bought my first laptop [acer aspire 3002LCi].  It has preinstalled XP 
> Home.  The 40G  hdd appears to have three partitions, two 18G fat32 
> partitions and a smaller one containing "diagnostics".
> 
> I want to install Linux on the Laptop and retain the XP OS.  I have done this 
> occasionally but not recently [windows 98] on a home PC.
> 
> I am wondering whether there are any odd hooks that I should be aware of. 
> Also, whether one distro is better suited than the others.  
> 
> I am not a programmer.  Nor do I have any experience with XP or windows 
> generally.  For the last five or six years, all three of our family's PC run 
> only Linux [RH8.0, suse9.2, and debian potato].  
> 

when I got my laptop,

it had a 20 GB drive, with a 15GB windows partition and 2 2.5GB
'restore' partitions.

After searching though the documentation, I found that the 2 restore
partitions are only used to save time reinstalling windows. I deleted
them with no problems.

So, you should be quite save to delete them.



With resizing windows partitions, I have found that there is never any
problems. Just works. :-)

You could even not need to resize it - just delete one of the 18GB
fat32's and the 4gb restore partition, to get 22GB of space for linux,
and 18GB for windows.




Also a warning:

If you ever reinstall windows backup all your linux stuff. My compaq
restore CD didn't just reinstall windows, it went through and recreated
the original partition structure, wiping my ENTIRE hard disk. :-(

(but I actually back my data up, so I didn't lose much.) :-)






-- 
-- Jethro Carr

jethro.carr at jedolinux.com

http://jethrocarr.jedolinux.com
http://jethrocarr.jedolinux.com/index.php?page=cv/cv.php

http://www.jedolinux.com
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