Ok.. I got a Linux Beginners Administration Guide that will help me w/ all my needs hopefully and learning Linux. Now.. Right now i have 2 Fat32 Partitions 1 w/ windows xp on it 45 gigs and the other is just a fat32 which i want to put linux on (15 gigs). I already have the disks for Mandrake 9.1 on disk and i have Partition Magic 8 already installed... How would i go about getting rid of the 15gig fat32 partition so that i can install Linux onto that as well as setting up the Dual Boot screen. do i need to get rid of the fat32 file system on my 15gig partition or will it give me the option to just install it over and rewrite the fat32 partition... i just dont wnat it to install on my 45gig piece and ovveride xp

You should delete the FAT32 partition from Partition Magic, and then in the Mandrake setup, just pick USE FREE SPACE and it will automatically set up 3 partitions, a home parition, a system partition, and a swap file partition. If you want a more custom partitioned system, in the partition setup of Mandrake, choose advanced or expert (cant remember) and just make the partitions the way you want. Its real simple and graphical. Your HOME partition is for personal files and settings, and / is for the OS. Then SWAP is for your swap file. If you do advanced,You need to choose a filesystem. There are 2, EXT3 and ReiserFS. Personally, I like Reiserfs, its faster and uses less space. But both are good, so your choice.

To expand a bit on what frink36 mentioned, ext2 is the old standard fs, where as ext3 is essentially ext2 w/ journalling capabilities. Journalling is basically where the os writes to a journal all writes (and I think reads but I'm not sure) to the fs so that in case of a failure of some kind, it's easier to know what might have been corrupted, etc. The older linux kernels can't support ext3, but since you have 9.1, you should have a 2.4 kernel, which supports it. Secondly, if you want a more customized partition structure, here are some things to consider: - As was said, / (or root) is the root partition where your whole OS is mounted on. - /home is for your home directories. It's usually recommended to keep this seperate because if you have to reinstall your system, your user files won't be corrupted. In my case I use a FAT-32 for most user files, but /home also contains linux app user files. - I also have /usr/local on a seperate partition since that's where user-specific apps are usually installed. Again, with a seperate partition, if you / partition goes down, you'll still have your user-specific apps (with the exception of any config files /etc, etc.) - I also have /tmp and /var in my /usr/local partition since /tmp and /var are written to fairly often, and it could be a potential security hazard to have / being written to a lot. (If you set that up after you install linux, like I did, make a symlink to /tmp and /var so your system is screwed up) - Lastly, I've heard of some people who put /boot on a seperate partition for security. /boot contains your linux kernel images, so you don't need more than 5-10MB. By having a seperate partition, you can make the partition read-only, except for when you are upgrading your kernel. That's probably more than you wanted to know, but it doesn't hurt! :) God bless Hiran

ok thanks... how do i get rid of the fat32 partition on the partition using particion magic?

Run Partition Magic 8, select the Fat 32 partition from the list below the graphic of your disk drive. On the left under Partition Operations, select Delete Partition. A Dialog box will confirm what you want to delete. Click OK.