Soul Existance wrote: > <snip> > ... so is it going to destroy any data on my win98 partition, or when > i do this change, does it only partition the 3 gigs i set aside... <snip>
You will be using Linux fdisk to create your root and swap partitions during the installation. You will see your dos partition when you list the table. As long as you don't make any changes to the DOS partition you should be fine. There is no guarantee though, there is a risk you could damage your windows installation. Back it up first. It is safer to use a secondary disk for Linux because that shelters the windows partition table from Linux fdisk. It only has to write the table on the second disk and does not touch the first disk. At the end of the install, you will be prompted to install the Linux boot loader (lilo) on the Master Boot Record (MBR) which is located at the beginning of the primary drive. Lilo is the utility that comes with Linux to provide a boot menu upon system startup. That is a safe operation because if your system won't boot after you load lilo, you can use "fdisk /mbr" from your Windows startup disk to restore the MBR and boot back into Windows. You can then boot Linux from a floppy and resolve your lilo configuration problems subsequently rewriting lilo to the MBR and giving it another go. Before you do anything, make a couple of "startup" disks from Windows 98 "Add/Remove Programs". Make a couple Linux boot disks when prompted at the end of the install as well. You will definitely need both later if not sooner. One last note, I don't mean to discourage you from using Debian, but it _is_ the most difficult to install. I understand that RedHat and Caldera are the easiest. You may want to get your feet wet with one of those and then graduate to Debian (it has a lot to offer) after you have earned some salt. Good luck and have fun!
