Now that my main computer is working...

[pseydtonne]

Last night I reinstalled everything necessary for my dual-boot machine to work. I haven't installed all of my software yet, but the hardest parts have been completed.

If you ever decide to build your own dual-boot system, here is my advice:

1. Start with a clean hard drive or a drive you don't mind will be wiped clean.
2. Get Red Hat 9 (more on that later) and boot the computer from the first disc of the Red Hat CDs.
3. Choose the text-based install and then hit alt-F2 to get the ash shell.
4. Run fdisk from here.
5. Create a primary partition for Windows, another primary for the boot loader (give it 200 MB if you have the space), and then a bunch of logical partitions for Linux flavors. Make your last partition a giant FAT32 partition for MP3s and shared files.
6. Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot. Red AHt's installer will shut down safely this way, believe it or not.
7. Reboot into the graphical install, but only to make sure Disk Druid doesn't have any issues with the partitions you've made. If it's happy, everything else will be. Ctrl-Alt-Del.
8. Install whichever version of Windows you're into (I'd recommend 2k).
9. Install Red Hat 9, which will give you Grub (the best boot loader around). Be sure to carve some extra boot selections for future operating systems.

I have some issues with Red Hat 9. I started with RH 7.1 back in July of 2001 and then moved to 7.3 about a year later. Each iteration has some good aspects, but each one also loses a couple useful features from the previous one. Nine has lost some important install features, such as:

• Creating non-root accounts during install;
• being able to change workspaces be using alt-F# (could someone tell me what this bastard uses instead? I'm a keyboard man.)
• A Windowing Manager that has any real options (Metacity chuncks. I'm not five, I'd like choices. If I didn't want choices, I'd be running XP Home.)

I can hardly wait to install Slackware on another partition. I have work to do, after all. If Slackware had come with Grub, I wouldn't have bothered with the increasingly Byzantine Red Hat.

I like having this quiet keyboard. I also like having a job, so I'd better sign out.

-from my own chair again, Ps/d