MP3's, partitioning, and win4lin

[Harry Kuhman]

1. My computer has 2 drives partitioned C through H. All my MP3's are on the F: drive, about 15 GB worth. Is there any way to import this music to Knoppix without burning them onto 4 DVD's?

Knoppix will be able to read any file on any partition just fine, as long as you haven't encryped the partitions.

2. I plan on buying Win4Lin, so I can run AutoCAD 2007, Flash 8 professional, PhotoShop CS2 and other programs for school on Knoppix. As Knoppix is LiveCD based, is it possible to use Win4Lin?

I can't say for sure that you will not be able to do it, with the unionFS and other technology Knppix can pull off some tricks, but i have my doubts. But it sounds like you don't plan on having a MS OS on this computer, why not install a hard disk Linux like Debian (I only suggest Debian because Knoppix is based on it)? That way you should be able to install any Linux application.

C. And finally, as I have mentioned before, I have 6 partitions in my computer. I read about Linux partitions, but I don't fully understand it. Will partitioning for Linux make a new letter I, merge with an existing letter H, or do something different? I have merged everything in my H: drive to my G: drive to make room for Linux. So, is it possible to put all my linux things on the H: drive, even though it is native to windows? Also, how do I go about partitioning it in a way so that I can utilize my H: drive?

As you pointed out, Knoppix is a Live CD. It runs from CD and does not need hard disk partitions, although it can read unencrypted partitions and write to FAT partitions. I will not discuss the blasphmy of trying to make Knoppix install to hard disk. If you decide from Knoppix that you like Linux and want a hard disk install there are many distros that are suitable for hard disk. How you choose to partition the system depends on how many hard drives that you have, how much space, if you want the OS to co-exist with other systems and so on. For installing Debian my simple answer would be to free up as much contigious space as you wish and delete the partitions (don't just leave them empty, remove them). Then tell Debian at install time to use all available unpartitioned space. There are may other approaches, but this simple approach works well for most new users.