[HenryVI]

I was wondering how much should I give to a Linux Partition?? I am gonna use QTParted, and I have a 37.2 gig hdd with 15.something gig's for Windows, and 21.something gig's free......


is 5 gig's enough to run Linux or...

[Squashman]

Depends which version of Linux you are installing and what options you chose to install. I would definitely go twice that if not more.

[brendandonhu]

Yes, you can easily run Linux on 5 Gigs, but you won't have a whole lot of room for your files.

[codejockey]

I second both pieces of advice. Knowing what you want to do (and might want to do later) is critical. A 5 Gbyte installation is useful, but won't leave a lot left over for storing large numbers of audio or video files; if you're not likely to need a lot of storage space in your Linux installation, then 5 Gbytes may be plenty.

Also, you can hedge your bets. You can install Linux in a 5 Gbyte partition (possibly divided among two or more filesystems) and create one or more additional partitions later if you need the storage. For reference, here is what I use:

ROOT: 9 /root-> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6             943M  554M  340M  62% /
/dev/hda7             2.8G  393M  2.3G  15% /home
/dev/hda9             2.8G  2.0G  654M  76% /usr
/dev/hda10            1.4G  306M  1.1G  23% /usr/local
/dev/hda11            905M   89M  769M  11% /var

Hope this helps.

[brendandonhu]

Basically it depeds on how much software you want to install and how many files you need to store. After all, you can install linux on a 5mb partition if you really want to.

[HenryVI]

Ok, it'll be FC3, and is 10 gig's good?
Here is my hdd

[brendandonhu]

10 Gigs is fine.

[HenryVI]

Ok, so do I have to make a swap partition and all that junk or can I:

Resize down to approx 28 gigs for Windows, and use 10 for FC3?

Or will I need to create all the swap files and extra filesystems like codejockey has??

[brendandonhu]

You don't need all those partitions, you can use a "swap file" instead of having a whole separate partition.
I believe Fedora will ask you which to use, but I could wrong about that.

[HenryVI]

And would I have to redo all of the shtuff...

meaning my network to my dad's comp for internet access, and to my printer/scanner??

[brendandonhu]

I'm not sure what you mean.
If your printer and file sharing is on that computer, and you format it to get rid of Windows, you will need to re-do it.
All that can be done with Samba.

[HenryVI]

I mean...I'm keeping Windows

it'll be a dual boot...

My Windows is connected to the net thru my dad's and my printer is connected to my comp. I am keeping Windows... so... will the network settings still be there in Linux and Windows?

[brendandonhu]

Ah I see. You will need to re-do the network settings, which is done in Samba.

[HenryVI]

Awww........ so what is Samba.... is it on FC3 and is it easy to use?

[codejockey]

Ok, so do I have to make a swap partition and all that junk or can I:
Resize down to approx 28 gigs for Windows, and use 10 for FC3?
Or will I need to create all the swap files and extra filesystems like codejockey has??

You will need a minimum of two partitions for Linux -- one for swap, and another for all of your files. You do not need to break things up as I have done.

My Windows is connected to the net thru my dad's and my printer is connected to my comp. I am keeping Windows... so... will the network settings still be there in Linux and Windows?

You will need to configure Linux to operate on your network; your Windoze settings should remain intact.

Ah I see. You will need to re-do the network settings, which is done in Samba.

You need samba to configure resource sharing between Windoze and Linux machines. You do not need samba in order to configure Linux networking.

Awww........ so what is Samba.... is it on FC3 and is it easy to use?

Samba is typically provided with your Linux distribution, and if not, is easily retrieved from a mirror site. Samba consists of two major parts: (1) the samba daemons (smbd and nmbd) and (2) other utilities. The daemons handle requests from Windoze machines to use Linux resources (printers, files, etc.); if you want to share Linux resources with Windoze machines, you would typically configure the daemons to execute automatically when Linux is booted. The utilities allow Linux to use Windoze resources and generally don't require any special configuration.

In general, samba is transparent once you get it configured correctly (which can be a bit of a pain).

Hope this helps.