See intertwined replys below...
On Wed, 24 May 2000, Stephen A. Brenner wrote:
> Second time was the charm with my SUSE installation after the hard drive
> problems.
SuSE rocks :)
> I'm impressed at how smoothly the operation really goes.
> I'm thinking now that I should have a backup linux system
never a bad idea!
> available for the next time something goes wrong. I've got some
> extra space on a win98 system. How concerned should I be about
> installing SUSE on an unused partition in a dual boot situation?
your concern should be equal to your concern for everything on the windows
workstation that you do not have backed up, or the ability to easily
restore. You can do dual/multi-boot computers fairly easily setup for many
folks... Ive been doing it for years though, so its hard for me to say how
much danger your in for. Linux has much better (imho) tools for
disk/partion management (tools like fdisk, DiskDrake, lilo, ...).
Tip: Windows is fairly picky about being on the first partition (ie
/dev/hda1, or C:\)
> Besides backing up, are there issues I should be aware of when
> installing to avoid doing damage to the existing os?
As long as you have windows as your first partition, and you dont try to
use more than 4 partitions total (including your swap partition), and you
dont try to shrink an existing M$ partition, your usually ok.
If you have a 4 gig disk, and you have partitioned 2 gigs for windows, and
left the other 2 gigs unpartitioned/used, you should be able to:
* boot any current linux distro from cd/floppy/loadlin/net/?
* Configure unused disk space for linux use (requires re-booting)
* format partitions/install linux
* install boot loader (lilo, loadlin, masterbooter, system commander, ...)
* reboot computer and use your choice of operating system (you can
actually have many OS's on one hard disk)
Jamie
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>
