Installing SuSe 10.1

[Dev2]

I am nearly finished downloading SuSe 10.1 DVD. I will be installing it later on today. The machine I will be installing it on has one partition that takes 99% of my hard drive and it has Windows XP Pro with files I want to keep on it and it an it's NTFS. It won't be the end of the world should something go wrong but preferably I would like to avoid that as it means a lot of downloading to get back to where I am.

I have installed SuSe 10 once before on an old machine and have installed Ubuntu on another old machine. In both cases it was just format and clean install. My hard drive is 80 GB. I will defrag before I start dividing up partitions. Anyway according to Window's "My Computer" I have 54 GB taken up and 20.4 GB to spare. I can probably shave the 54 GB down to 50 GB which gives me about 12 GB for a SuSe partition which I feel is reasonable because the SuSe install is 3.5 GB and includes a lot of software some of which I won't install or at least uninstall when it's finished. I will be using SuSe for various things such as playing media and web browsing maybe a small bit of college work but mostly I want to do it for learning to get to grips with SuSe.

Now what I need help with is advice. First off I have a Pentium 4 2.GHz, Dell 4600,6600 GT,X-Fi Music (Don't expect to work sa there are no drivers),HP DVD RW and a Netopia Caymen 3300 broadband modem. Will I encouter any problems with my hardware? What software should I use to create the 12 GB partition? Is there anything I am forgetting or haven't looked at. Thanks in advance for any replies.

I plan on using Partition Magic 8.0 (Free Trial) and will divide the hard drive like this. Total 74.4 GB

PRIMARY - Windows - NTFS - 50 GB
PRIMARY - Windows Paging - NTFS -1 GB
PRIMARY - Linux / - EXT3 - 8 GB
EXTENDED
LOGICAL - Linux Swap - Linux SWAP - .5 GB
LOGICAL - Linux /TMP - EXT3 - .5 GB
LOGICAL - Linux /VAR - EXT3 - .5 GB
LOGICAL - Linux /HOME - EXT3 - 2 GB
LOGICAL - WIN/LIN Shared - FAT32 - 10 GB

 

[kiwi]

you'll need a linux / and /boot in there unless you have one partition for those with /home, too. i'm not sure what partition manager SUSE uses but i imagine it's gparted. it's as good as partition magic and will do the job.

 

[Dev2]

OK I have installed it sucessfully but I want to reinstall as I feel the first installation divided up my space ineffeiciently. Could somebody suggest a better means of dividing the one below. I have 1 GB RAM how much should I use for the /swap and "/" partition.

Heres my new suggestion


PRIMARY - Windows - NTFS - 60 GB
PRIMARY - Linux / - Reiser - 12 GB
PRIMARY - / -Reiser -1 GB
PRIMARY - Linux Swap /swap - 1 GB

I won't bother with sharing space between Windows and SuSE.

you'll need a linux / and /boot in there

Thanks for the reply but what will these partitions do for me? Thanks
-Dev

 

[cb_linus]

Heres my new suggestion

PRIMARY - Windows - NTFS - 60 GB
PRIMARY - Linux / - Reiser - 12 GB
PRIMARY - / -Reiser -1 GB
PRIMARY - Linux Swap /swap - 1 GB

I won't bother with sharing space between Windows and SuSE.

I doubt you'll need much swap with that 1GB ram (I have 1GB ram and 160mb swap, which is very rarely used). How about 4 primary partitions:

Suggestion 1:

/dev/sda1 windows - ntfs - 60gb
/dev/sda2 swap - 160mb
/dev/sda3 /boot - 32mb
/dev/sda4 / - reiserfs (or ext3) - the rest

/boot is optional but highly recomended to have on a separate partition as it can be unmounted after boot (it contains files & info. neceesary for Suse to boot up). You also might consider a separate partition for /home (where all you personal files usually go) so if you decide to reinstal your Linux distro (upgrade or change of distro) you shouldn't lose the data on /home as you don't need to reformat it.

Suggestion 2 (with an extended partition):

/dev/sda1 windows - ntfs - 60gb
/dev/sda2 swap - 160mb
/dev/sda3 /boot - 32mb
/dev/sda4 / - reiserfs (or ext3 etc) - 5-8GB (depends what you want to install)
/dev/sda5 /home - reiserfs (or ext3 etc) - the rest (although this can really fill up)

If you're using the 2nd suggestion then it might be an idea to free up a few GBs from the Windows partition, depending on how long you plan on using Suse / Linux I guess, for some more space in /home

edit: the main partition where Linux is installed on is '/' (your root partition).

 

[Dev2]

Thanks for the reply. As far as I know I can only have a combination totalling 4 partitions (primary/extended) including my Windows one. So which two partitions should I make logical under the extended partition.( /boot+/home)?

Suggestion 2 (with an extended partition):

/dev/sda1 windows - ntfs - 60gb
/dev/sda2 swap - 160mb
/dev/sda3 /boot - 32mb
/dev/sda4 / - reiserfs (or ext3 etc) - 5-8GB (depends what you want to install)
/dev/sda5 /home - reiserfs (or ext3 etc) - the rest (although this can really fill up)

-Dev

 

[philhoole]

If you are feeling restricted by the 4 partitions limit you may want to look at a boot manager called Bootit. It removes the limit by using their own MBR.

For each OS you want to boot you can still only have 4 primary partitions that it can "see" but these can be selected from (I think) up to 256 on a single HDD.

I have used this for years as have several work colleagues and it just works. Never ever caused a problem. Can't recommend it enough.