[saikee]

I am just two weeks into Linux and have been experimenting Slax, Knoppix, Fedora C2, Suse and Mandrake. The last three have been installed into hard disks (in mobile racks and caddies).

As a long term arrangement it would be nice if I could resized the partitions because being new I allowed some Linux versions to do automatic installation and they grabbed all the unallocated hard disk space, without saying a word of thank you.

Partition magic doesn't want to know about it so I wonder if there is a method to reclaim some HDD space back. The Suse is sitting on 100Gb but only manages to keep less than 10% of the partition busy.

Also is it permissible to move the partition between hard disks? I wouldn't have thought it possible because of the way Linux names the partitions in hda1, hda2, hd3 etc.

Lastly would it be a wise move to put several Linux systems on the same hard disk? There are a lot of posts on dual boots between Windows and Linux but not much on a group of Linux. The Grub information suggests this is possible but so far I have screwed a Suse and Fedora combination on a hard disk.

My motive of running several Linux is to see how each version perform. Some seem to be better in picking up the hardware than the others. In BASH level most of the commands are common so whatever I learn from one system is'nt all wasted in another.

[HappyHacker]

So far as the reclaim I don't know, but I have had 4 distro's plus XP running on my old PC. Just choose your boot loader, and be sure that it has info on ALL the systems. I was using Redmond-Lycoris Linux for the boot loader, the only problem I had was the short time to choose. 3 seconds....
Lilo is good too.

[saikee]

Any reason not telling Grub to give more time?

I thought it was just changing the number in "Timeout=3" or there is more to it.

[HappyHacker]

I just never got around to changing it. I was using Linux more than XP anyway...