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Before Linux Installation
Part 1 of the Linux Newbie Administrator Guide
 
 Related Resources
• Linux Newbie Administrator Guide
• 0. Linux Benefit
• 1. Before Installation
• 2. Linux Resources/Help
• 3. Basic Operations FAQ
• 4. Newbie Admin FAQ
• ~ 4.1 Lilo
• ~ 4.2 Drives
• ~ 4.3 X-Windows
• ~ 4.4 Configurations
• ~ 4.5 Networking
• 5. Shortcuts / Commands
• 6. Linux Applications
• 7. Learn Linux Commands
• A. How to Upgrade Kernel?
 

1.10 The MS Windows partition occupies my whole harddrive. Can I shrink/split it without a re-install?

Possibly. There is a utility called FIPS.EXE on my RedHat CD that does just that. Check the directory \dosutils\fipsdocs\ on your RedHat CD for documentation. If I were you, I would back-up my essential data before doing anything to my partitions. There are also commercial utilities to change the partition size without destroying its contents.

My personal preference is to do a clean re-install of MS Windows on a single, dedicated partition. I leave some space on the hard drive unpartitioned so I can use it later for Linux. My fair division of hard drive space between MS Windows and Linux is 50/50. Linux programs tend to be smaller but they include (as standard) components that MS Windows offers only with many thousand of dollars of add-ons: e.g., servers (not just clients) for telnet, ftp, http, and mail, several databases, programming languages, graphics processing programs ...

Next > 1.11 How do I start the installation?

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