The format may be messed up, but here is something that might help. The new laptop owner has a decision to make: dual boot or not. For those not “in the know” about Linux, modern versions of Linux can be installed such that the user has the option to select which OS he desires to run: XP or various versions of Linux. While it is more work to set the laptop up in this manner, the advantages to a dual boot system are several: a) Windows software can be run on the same machine in its native OS (versus running it under wine in Linux) b) One can boot back and forth into Windows and Linux while one is working out the hardware issues with setting Linux up. This can be extremely helpful if the laptop is your only computer. i. One can allow a user not familiar with Linux to use the laptop without having to educate them. There are some downsides: a) it is somewhat more work to set up a dual boot system. b) the XP partition takes up valuable hard drive space. i. one has to watch that the use of XP doesn't introduce viruses onto the laptop, ie XP viruses running under XP that do damage to the boot image or to the Linux partitions. Luckily Linux is relatively immune to such viruses, but partition damage <from a Windows virus to the Linux partition> is partition damage. d) if one is just learning Linux, one has a tendency to stick with using Windows. If you want to learn to use Linux, I recommend NOT installing a dual boot system. Some people disagree with this mentality. I guess it depends what on your patience level, Unix knowledge, how critical your system is to you, etc. as well as your pain threshold. I needed my laptop for a project that had both Linux and Windows components, thus I chose to set up a dual boot system. This is my first dual boot system and it works great. I almost never boot XP up, save for work on a project that requires Windows software development. BTW: If you install a dual boot system and want to uninstall Windows at some point and regain the hard drive space for Linux, you can. Linux has a tool that can repartition NTFS (and other) file systems such that the Windows partition can be removed and the space used by Linux, WITHOUT THE LOSS OF ANY LINUX DATA. WOW ! Obtaining Linux Software and Tools. The first thing you will need to do is obtain the required software, ie a Linux OS. You can obtain Fedora Linux ISO files from www.redhat.com/fedora. Click on the download icon at the top of the page, select a mirror site and start downloading. I typically download the ISO files necessary for a complete installation. I do not download the source RPMs unless I have a specific use for them. BTW: I recommend that you do NOT download development or project ISOs. While it can be fun to work on Fedora development projects, unless you are quite experienced with Linux this is a mistake. As one developer put it: “nothing in a test release should be expected to work without problems”. It is not unusual when running a test release to spend as much time debugging and documenting “issues” as using the software productively. Once you have the install ISO files, you'll need to burn them to CDROMs. For those not familiar with ISO files, they are a file system image. When an ISO file system is burned to a CDROM, the file system image should be expanded into the real file system, resulting in a bootable, ready to use CDROM. It takes special software to burn an ISO file onto a CDROM such that it results in a usable file system. If the CDROM has one file on it named <file>.iso when it is done, the burner software did NOT correctly burn the ISO file. A correctly burnt CDROM will have a complete file system on it, with the files, holders, hidden files and links that were represented in the ISO image. Windows typically does not include CDROM burning software capable of correctly burning an ISO image. A Windows user must typically procure and install software capable of burning an ISO image. Luckily the ZD7000 machines ship with the Sonic CDNOW software installed, an application that can burn your ISO files to CDROMs or a DVD. Linux has several applications capable of burning an ISO image file. Xcdroast and cdrecord are just 2 applications that will burn an ISO image. My favorite Linux CD software is k3b. To install dual boot Linux from CDROMs: 1) Remove everything you don’t want on the Windows hard drive. This allows you to make the Windows partition as small as possible. 2) Download the Linux ISO files and burn the ISO disks. You’ll need to find a Windows app that understands the concept of ISO files ! 3) Download a Linux Rescue Disk ISO and burn it to CDROM. http://www.sysresccd.org/ 1. Boot with the Linux Rescue CDROM. I disabled network functionality and automatic device searching finding. Run “run_qtparted”. I resized the Windows partition from 75 GB to 16 GB, leaving 59 GB for Linux. Don’t forget to commit the change ! (See the Actions menu.) Exit out of the rescue disk. If run_qtparted returns a file accounting error when you resize the partition, you'll need to boot Windows and run the disk fix utility. <PUT THE NAME HERE> Once the disk error is fixed, reboot the Linux Rescue CDROM and resize the partition. NOTE: Normally there is no data loss when the partition is resized. This assumes that you are resizing the Windows partition to a size larger than the volume of data on it. While you are running the rescue CD, get the number of cylinders,heads and sectors for the hard drive by running fdisk -i /dev/hda Record this information as you'll need it in a few steps. 5) Reboot Windows. When it fires up, you will probably get a disk needs scanning message. Let it scan it. It shouldn’t find any errors, just that things have changed, ie the disk size. 1. Boot the first Linux install disk. There is a bug in Fedora Core 2 installer. If you are using this ISO, boot with “linux hda=cylinders,heads,sectors” at the command line so that the Windows partition isn’t messed up. ie: boot: linux hda=11389,255,1024 (These are fictitious numbers, used for illustration only.) You won't need the hard drive parameters for installations other than Fedora Core 2. BTW: if your laptop is acting up during the boot stage (no keyboard, no USB devices, no mouse, no monitor, etc.) there are a very large number of work arounds to these problems documented in “The Linux Troubleshooting Bible”. In this day and age I highly doubt one could find a laptop that Linux couldn't be run on, let alone the zd7000 which runs it very, very well. 1. Run through the usual pre setup stuff. When it comes to partitioning, I did it manually with disk_druid. Add a 100MB partition for /boot, a 1 GB partition (or as big as the RAM is) for swap and the rest for / (root). Select your installation options and let Linux install itself. I use grub as my boot loaded and have since Redhat 8. It works great. 1. When it comes time to select the packages to install, I recommend installing the basic software development tools such that you'll have the right packages on the machine to build applications and kernels. You can always add these packages later via the install disks, but having them installed in the first place will save you work later on. Simple configuration tasks such as installing the wireless network driver are going to require these tools. Note: packages not installed now can be added later with Add/Remove Programs or Synaptic (or Yum for that matter.) Some people say that adding programs now is easier as using Add/Remove programs can require a lot of CDROM swapping as it solves dependencies for each application added separately. Nevertheless it works quite well. Post Install Cleanup Once your Linux (and XP) partitions boot properly, you can start the longish process of optimally configuring your Linux laptop. Because Linux installations do not contain the correct video driver or appropriate monitor specs for the ZD7000s, you'll probably have a terrible looking display when you first boot Linux. This is probably the first thing you'll want to fix when you get running. On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 10:21 -0800, Charles Li wrote: -- Kim Lux, Diesel Research Inc.

On Friday 28 January 2005 10:21 am, Charles Li flailed at a keyboard and produced this: It's not sufficient that it have 40GB of free space. It needs to be partitioned properly. Use a partitioning tool (I like "Partition Magic") to create a separate Linux Native (ext2 or ext3) partition for your FC3 installation. Once that partition is created, your disks should install FC3 just fine. Be careful that you don't overwrite your Windows partition when you install it, as I almost did had I not double-checked the options on that screen. I would *very seriously* recommend getting a nice thick book about Fedora Core 3 (I think Que has a "Fedora Core 3 Bible") which should have a good chapter explaining this partitioning thing. I don't say this to be pedantic or condescending; I gather that you're very new to Fedora Core 3, and books such as these really helped me figure out what I was doing years ago (back when I was using Red Hat 7.2). If I misunderstand your experience level, I apologize. -- Slainte, Richard S. Crawford (mailto: rscrawford(a)mossroot.com) AIM: Buffalo2K / http://www.mossroot.com "You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus." -Mark Twain GPG Public Key located at: http://www.mossroot.com/rscrawford.asc