RE: [gentoo-user] remove suse, install gentoo

[Michael Kintzios]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Wilson [mailto:stevewilson@××××.com]
> Sent: 11 January 2006 12:42
> To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
> Subject: [gentoo-user] remove suse, install gentoo
>
>
> box: Prostar 2.8Gig ProStar Laptop  w/60 Gig, 7200 rpm hard
> drive, 1 Gig Ram
> Current configuration:
> XP factory installed on 30gig partition
> Suse v9.0 installed on 20gig partition ext2,  1 Gig SWAP
>
> Goal:
> 1. Remove Suse.
> 2. Format 20 gig with Reisersf
> Leave Grub
> Install Gentoo
> Install VMware.
>
> Question:
> Can I install Gentoo over Suse or should I start over on a
> clean hard drive.
>
> Option I am considering:
> Start with a new hard drive, install Gentoo, VMware and then
> run XP as a
> virtual machine.
> Please advise.
>
> Background:
> I have installed Gentoo from Stage1 on a P3 600 Compaq Deskpro EN and
> Kubuntu on another Compaq Deskpro EN.
> But consider myself a Gentoo novice.
>
> This is my first email to the list.
> Thanks in advance for any help,

Welcome to the list Steve!  :-)

As you probably know there's more than one ways to skin a cat, so I only
express my preferences here;  yours could be entirely different.  I
would leave the factory installed WinXP alone.  Back up and thereafter
remove all personal files and data from My Documents/Music/etc.  Use
Qtparted or Partition Magic, or whatever to shrink it down to 10-12G.
Make sure that you defrag it a few times (before each successive
shrinking).

Then install Gentoo in the remaining space - preferably in primary
partitions (it may give you an infinitesimally small increase in drive
access/read/write speed).  Assuming you are using the default three
partition installation, then have swap first, root second, then an
extended partition and in logical partition(s) you can fit home if you
want it separately and boot last.  Bringing Grub up could take an extra
second but running the rest of the system should benefit
proportionately.

You can also create a vfat partition (personally I would put it on the
second drive) and map all applications in WinXP to use that to save My
Docs/Music/etc.- This would be your shared partitions to be able to
access files from all OS'.

With 1G RAM I would not have a swap partition any larger than 120M.  As
a matter of fact even that could be an overkill, but you never know.  A
single swap partition would do nicely for both Linuxes (change your
/fstab accordingly).   Size:  a lot depends on what you use your system
for, how often you reboot/flush your swap, logs and how many buggy
applications you're running.  Just as an indication on a 256M RAM box I
am using a 145M swap partition which I have never seen filling up more
than 75M.  Even that only happened when Opera was caching all sort of
chinese type fonts like mad and OOo was compiling at the same time.
Otherwise even large compiles (KDE monolithic) struggle to use more than
65M.  For reasons mentioned above your mileage may vary.

Of course if you want to go multi-partition insane you could do what
I've done and install Gentoo spread across multiple partitions on two
drives/separate controllers to allow parallel access/processing by the
CPU.  A pain to back up but entertaining all the same if you like that
sort of thing!  8-D

Good luck,
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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