[ale] First post

James P. Kinney III jkinney at localnetsolutions.com
Tue May 16 21:04:02 EDT 2006


> OK,
>
> Xandros lists among its features:
> Automatic resizing of Microsoft? FAT/FAT32/VFAT and NTFS partitions
> Allocate installation space from FAT, VFAT or FAT32 partition
>
> The target drive is blank and formated with NTFS.  I'll attempt to
> resize it to something very small.

Since in the original post the plan was to install Linux as a single OS on
the drive and this is your first time installing a Linux system, let the
installation process make the choices for you so you can get in and get
your feet wet with the OS. As Linux systems don't use NTFS (they use
several, the most common currently are ext3 and resierfs) as native
filesystem formats, you will want to be ready to let the Linux installer
partition and reformat the drive.

The only time you want a fat32 (vfat) filesystem is when you need to share
data between a linux system dual booting with Windows. Linux can't
(reliably or safely) write to an NTFS drive.

Since the target drive is blank and just formatted NTFS, just take the
short route to an installed OS and the tell the installer to reformat and
partition the drive.

Others here will argue with me about this, but install everything in the
Xandros distibution. You are new and don't know what you like or will use
yet. So load it up! Then you can tinker with anything you like with a
minimum of effort.

As you learn more about how you use a Linux system, you'll do another
installation and narrow down the package list. In time, you'll have
multiple machines running different distros so you can do speed and
package tests and then you can write for Linux Journal :)
>
> Thanks for the advice.
>
> Bill
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>




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