Install Docs

The following is the easy Win user way.
If you are cautious or methodical, click here first.

Installation is pretty well a no brainer at this point. Defrag your drive under Windows, run Partition Magic to make a partition for Linux, run the Linux install. Mandrake and most new Linuxes allow you to resize your Win partition and make a new partition during the install so you can skip the second step if you want. Even if you know nothing at all about Linux you should be able to do it with no problem.  I have tried all the Linux installations and find Madrake the best for people coming from Windows.  Use the Automatic install option for the easiest install for those new to Linux.

Probably the only thing that would confuse you is the disk-partitioning scheme under Linux, which is different than Dos\Win. Dos\Win can only have two partitions on a drive, one primary partition, and one secondary partition. The primary is called C under Dos\Win. Any other "drives" on a single physical hard drive are all on the single extended partition. If you have more than one "drive" on a single physical hard drive under Dos\Win (D or D and E), they are "logical" drives on the single extended partition. Linux can have up to 4 primary partitions (hda1 to hda4) and up to 4 secondary partitions (hda5 to hda8, more in some cases).

You probably don't care about most of this at this point, you probably have Win on C, (this is hda1 under Linux) you will make a new partition, probably hda5, (this would be D under Dos\Win) which you will mount as / (the root directory, same thing as C:\ in Dos\Win), and dump everything into it. On the auto install of most distributions now you will not even be ask this question, the install does it for you. If you want to know more about this just in case, read on.

There are three pieces to the Linux drive setup...
A. The physical device as the system sees it...
B.  The filesystem type...
C.  The mount point...

A.  Drives...

The first hard drive is /dev/hda.  The first partition on this drive is /dev/hda1.  The floppy is /dev/floppy, but that is usually just a "link" to /dev/fd0 (Floppy Drive 0 get it?)  The cdrom is /dev/cdrom, but that is just a link to /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd (the third or fourth IDE drive on your system, depending where the manufacturer hooked it up at)  The first scsi drive is /dev/sda.  The first partition on that drive is /dev/sda1. etc...

B.  Filesystem...

Unlike Dos\Win, which usually only supports its current filesystem, Linux supports a vast number of file systems.  The native Linux filesystem is ext2.  However it also supports fat12 (very old Dos), fat16, vfat (this supports both the type of fat16 used on Win95 and the fat32 used on Win98), hpfs (the filesystem of OS/2), NTFS (The NT/Win2000 file system), Solaris, Minix, iso 9660 (cdrom drives) and about 50 other file systems.  If you need it, its in there.  This is nice as it lets you access your Windows drive and any others you may have.

C.  Mount point...

Unlike Dos\Win, where C:\ is always the first partition  on the first physical drive, and C:\Windows then also has to be on the first partition on the first physical drive, with Linux you can mix and match things any way you want.  The root partiton (/) can be on any partition of any drive.  It can be anything and anywhere. It can be a floppy or a ROM chip or the 5th partition on your 4th physical hard drive (that would be hdd5 : ) or a network drive 10,000 miles away. Then, something "under" a directory or folder doesn't have to be on the same physical device like it does on Dos\Win.  The root partiton (/) can be on hdb3 and /usr can be on hda2 and /usr/share can be on hdd8 or win2linux.com : mountspace/shares (a different computer).  On the machine I am using now / is on hda5, /usr is on hda6 and /home is on hda8. The use of both hard and symbolic links in the Linux filesystem make all this possible.

Another possible confusion is the "root" directory vs the /root directory, which is the home directory of root, the "superuser" (you if you are installing Linux).  All other users have home directories in subdirectories of the /home directory.  Mom's home directory will be /home/mom.  Bob's home directory will be /home/bob.  This "home" directory scheme under Linux is really a massive improvement over what you are use to, all your stuff (documents, personal desktop and application setups, etc.) goes into your home directory, belongs to you, and is protected from the other users.  If you are in a family and more than one person uses the computer, you will love this.

You can also have the filespaces always available by having Linux "mount" them at bootup, or you can mount and unmount them yourself. This is handy if you need to access something occasionally as the administrator but don't want it always there for others to use or see. It is also useful by not having a file search waste time searching through the CD in the CD drive. Simply unmount it first.

When you get done with the install your other drives will be thus, the floppy is mounted as /mnt/floppy, the CD drive is mounted as /mnt/cdrom, the Dos\Win partition will be something like /mnt/Dos_hda1. If you ok the use of supermount during the install, you will use them just like under Windows, otherwise you have to mount them first each time you use them. (type mount /mnt/cdrom in a xterm, shell or other command window, and umount /mnt/cdrom to unmount them, or click mount and unmount in KDE) If there is an entry in /etc/fstab for a given device you can use the short version of the command as above (mount /mnt/cdrom) if there is no such entry you must use the long version (mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -t iso9660 for a cd, mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/disk -t vfat for your Windows directory, etc.)

One more difference that might confuse you... if you don't use supermount, (and supermount is disabled by default on Mandrake 8.1) you have to unmount the cdrom drive before you can open it to remove the disk.

To go to the detailed installation guide click here.
To go to the main documentation page click here.


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