how to install it

ive heard much things about linux...i want to give it an ambitious try seeing it is that i know nothing about it.. there is a way where i can seperate my hard drive right???? how. and will i still be able to use the things i use on windows? like aim or yahoo instant messenger...

answer in english please!

Pretty much pick a distro, and then search Google for "Dual boot Windows and (whatever linux)" You should find the information you need.

well, first you have to download a distribution. there is no "best one", you just need to find the right one that fits your needs. i'd suggest trying a few if you can, but you definitely need a broadband connection OR you can buy most major distro's from their makers respectively. another alternative is to buy the disks from http://distrowatch.com/ but i believe if you buy from the original manufacturer, you get things such as tech support and user documentation. however, i'm not 100% positive as i've never bought lol. i suggest you try one of: Xandros, http://www.xandros.com ; Fedora, http://www.redhat.com/fedora (however, i'd wait til june 13 b/c thats the date redhat has posted for the next version to be released and itd be pointless to download v3 now when v4 will be here in 8 days ) ; SuSe Pro, http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/ ; or Mandriva, http://www.mandriva.com/ . yes, you can "seperate" your hard drive.. but if your using your whole hard drive for windows (as you probably are) and you only have 1 hard drive, your going to have to use a hard drive partition utility. the most well known is probably partition magic but i've heard about a lot of peoples hard drives becoming corrupt thanks to their software, so i'd go with something different such as partition resizer, http://www.zeleps.com/ ; or partition manager, http://www.partition-manager.com/index.htm?sourceID=DW ; however i haven't used any of this software so if anyone knows of something better, please suggest lol good luck.

on a similar topic, ive used knoppix for about three days, and i want to go over to a more permanent setting. yesterday night/today morning, i was loading longhorn [finally figured it out!] onto a new partition that i created in partition magic. and when i was creating that partition, i saw an option to partition it for LINUX [instead of fat, fat32, or ntfs] would i have to use that or something else.

what exactly do you mean? you CAN use partition magic to create a linux partition, but i think its somewhat pointless because i believe when / if you choose to actually install linux, it'll format the partition with whatever filesystem anyways. but what exactly are you asking? would you have to use partition magic to create a partition for linux? b/c if so, then no - you could take an unformatted partition and install linux on it or you could take an NTFS partition and install linux on it (however, in both cases it would format the partition and write the linux filesystem structure onto the hard drive).
but personally, i still dont trust partition magic...

I'm told the best thing a noob can do is to BUY a popular distro, it costs like $30 and you get tech support for 3-6 months, this means if you have a problem, just call the tech support number (which might be toll-free dependign on the distro) and you will have any problem solved

The tech support is designed to help people who dont know anything so they talk in english too

Also on another note the last time I installed SuSe 9.1 (older version) it seemed to repartition the harddrive for me. I can't remember for sure though, it was on a HP Kayak (old workstations) I thought it was pretty cool, and Windows 2000 still worked after.

Not sure if other distro's do it though, I know Gentoo doesn't and I'm pretty sure Debian doesn't either.

On another note Debian 3.1 Sarge has been finally released as the new 'stable' branch.

Good luck in choosing a distro.

i DEFINITELY wouldn't suggest a n00b trying to install Gentoo or Debian. lol, personally i think they would go insane, kill their hard drive, and possible kill themselves or just get frustrated and format with a windows disk. lol either way they'll go to hell ^_^

what types of hard drives can i use for linux? can i still use my regular processor that i have?

you need no special hardware for linux, aside from POSSIBLY a modem if you use dial-up or you may have network adapter issues, but there is a pretty large support base for network adapters so that shouldn't be a problem. but yea - same processor, video card, ram, etc. will work with linux if it works (or at least tries ) with windows.


//edit
when you ask 'what types of hard drives', do you mean what types of hard drive partitions? such as FAT, NTFS, etc?

I search a good help of linux and i found it here...............so could i ask what is the step by step how to install the mandrake 10.0..........I know you could help me...........When i first mandrake linux it look good.........I wanna know how to install it.............I am new about linux...if you ask to buy this distro..we dont have one of this cuz no one sell it in our country.............

Could you list the step by step how to install it....Hope if its ok to all here...........or could you just PM...........if its alright.....to all here.......

Go here to download the iso's to install mandriva (mandrake's new name). there you can find the most recent version. after you download the iso's, burn them to cd's. you can do this with programs like Nero or Alcohol 120%. after you've got it burned, restart the computer with the first disk in your cdrom drive. make sure your computer is set to boot from the cdrom drive before the hard drive (you can do this by tapping delete as your computer is starting to boot, go into advanced Mandriva has a graphical installer much like Windows, so all you have to do is click next a couple times, and maybe make a couple choices like how paranoid you want your firewall settings
hope this helps.

How about the installion if its ok if i dual boot with the WinXP sp2.........
I have a partion drive both NTFS. The first is my system drive and second is my installer all my software store on here............
How can i install those mandrake w/o a mess..The only i know is how to install the winxp thats all....just want to learn how to install mandrake linux.......a help is a welcome....

well first you would have to resize one of your NTFS partitions. you can't resize the C: drive as thats the one running windows, but you could move your files from your 2nd hard drive onto your C: drive, delete the partition on that drive, create a new partition that will be big enough for your files, but will leave probably at very LEAST 6 gigs for mandrake, and then move your files from your C: drive back to your 2nd hard drive. then, you dont want to create an NTFS partition on the free space where you want to install mandriva, so dont do anything with it yet. then during the Mandriva install it will ask you which partition to install onto and you can choose the unpartitioned space on your 2nd hdd. when Mandriva installs, it will detect your windows partition and when your computer restarts you will have the option of which operating system you want to boot to (this is the bootloader). from there you can choose to boot windows xp or mandriva.