Some Elementary Pre-Install Questions

[Geoff Shang]

On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Moshe Segal wrote:

> Hi.  I have been on this list for several weeks, and decided to read the 
> various subject threads before posting.  I am feeling somewhat discouraged, 
> as most of the subjects discussed seem to imply that most of you already 
> have Linux up and running, which leaves me in back of the line.

Hey, never fear, we all had to start at the beginning, and some of us did
it here.

> At this point, I have not installed Linux on my system, though I have taken 
> some preparatory steps, including downloading the packages of interest and 
> creating the boot disk from the image at the Speakup FTP site.  I have also 
> downloaded and periodically review Joe Norton's Real Audio tutorials.

OK, so you presumably wish to use slackware linux.  This is not a problem,
but there will be questions down the track that slackware users will have
to answer for you.

> Before I take the big plunge, I have a few basic questions:
> 
> 1.  Currently, I am running Win98 with two physical hard drives (not just 
> partitions on a single drive), my C drive being about 6.5 GB and my D drive 
> being 2 GB.  Since I am mainly using my D drive for storage, I can easily 
> transfer the data to the C drive during the re-formatting and 
> re-partitioning.  If I plan to use both OS's, do I need to have them on the 
> same physical drive?

No you don't.  You can quite happily have linux on your D drive, and that's
what I'd actually recommend so you don't upset windows.

> 2.  Assuming that the answer to question 1 is yes,  I understand that it is 
> possible to make a choice at boot-up which OS to use.  Do those choices 
> speak?  If not, Can I make the choice easily without sighted assistance?

Regardless of the answer to question 1, you will still need to make a
choice which OS to boot, though you can set a default.  If you have a
serial speech synth, you can make the LILO prompt talk by getting LILO to
dump its output to that serial port.  But you define what you have to type
so you can make it easy on yourself.

> If this is not the right place to go to have these questions answered, 
> please indicate where I should subscribe.  Additionally, as I am receiving 
> the digests of the list, I request that I get my answers separate from the 
> list; either answer me privately, or put me in the CC field, so that I can 
> keep the answers separate.  Thanks and regards.

No worries.  I'm sure we'll all help you out, but there is a list
specifically for this sort of thing.  You can get to it by sending an
E-mail to blinux-newbie-request at braille.uwo.ca with subscribe in the body
(I think, can never remember the mailman syntax).   It's the same
listserve as this list, anyway.  I'd recommend subbing to both as different
people lerk on each.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoff Shang <gshang10 at scu.edu.au>
ICQ number 43634701