OK, I'll set it up as you recommend. I haven't even had a chance to download and burn the latest KANOTIX iso, so I'll do all that this weekend (day job gets in the way of all this fun stuff).
BTW, I'm keeping sda4 because...?
Thanx, AJG
Keep sda4! Just delete sda3 and put an extended partition ("new sda3") in its place. If you want sda3 to have more space, shrink sda2 before creating new sda3. New sda3 is just a container for several logical disks which you can use for Linux partitions including swap.
Example:
sda1, primary partition
sda2, primary partition, bootable
sda3, extended partition ("container" for logical disks sda5 thru sda7)
-------->sda5, ext3 = Knoppix root partiton
-------->sda6, linux-swap = swap partition
-------->sda7, FAT32 = data partition to be used with Knoppix and Windows
sda4, primary partition
P.S.: "Extended partition" refers to a section of your hard drive, it has nothing to do with filesystems such as ext2 or ext3.
OK, I'll set it up as you recommend. I haven't even had a chance to download and burn the latest KANOTIX iso, so I'll do all that this weekend (day job gets in the way of all this fun stuff).
BTW, I'm keeping sda4 because...?
Thanx, AJG
... because you paid about 100 bucks to buy what's on it (Windows, Dell software & other stuff). And using 3.9 GB for swap would be way too much.
When you have booted off the Kanotix-LiveCD, go to http://kanotix.com and search the forum for compiz and beryl. beryl is amazing and quite stable, but it requires an Nvidia video card. Kano wrote an installer script for it, so it's easy to get it running.
OK, but I thought sda3 was also part of all the Dell support stuff.
BTW, what is beryl or compiz. Also, once I defrag and use gparted to resize sda2 to 50GB and create sda5 as ext2 49.5GB and sda6 as linuxswap 0.5GB, what hdd installer do I use? I don't suppose its called knoppix-installer on a kanotix liveCD, right? Or is that what you meant by compiz and beryl?
Sorry, I never used KANOTIX before. However, I have used some of Kano's nvidia graphics accelorator scripts!
Thanx,
AJG
That would be bad; I thought it wasn't used.OK, but I thought sda3 was also part of all the Dell support stuff.
beryl is a 3D window manager. When I first heard about it, I thought it was some stupid eye candy, trying to mimic Windows Vista. But it's much better, and I even bought an nvidia video card to be able to use it. It's easy to install, and I've already posted a how-to in the Kanotix forum, so you can test it with the LiveCD right away: http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-21468.html
Desktops are arranged on a cube. You can navigate the cube with Ctrl+Alt+left mouse button or Ctrl+Alt+cursor left/right/up/down.
OK, it looks like sda3 is just a backup partition. So, you are right, sda4 is much more important. I suppose I can kill it!
BTW, I downloaded KANOTIX-2006-01-RC4-preview on that new WIMxP box and couldn't get roxio to burn anything. I'm going to have to redownload it on one of my KNOPPIX boxes and burn it there....
Thanx for all your help,
AJG
You know this really is a pain that you can only have 4 primary partitions! If I could make more primary partitions, I could just resize sda2 to make room for sda5 and sda6!
I think I'm going to play it safe and not resize anything. I'll just use the 38GB sda3 for KANOTIX. I was going to use KANOTIX to get gparted to resize sda2 which has ntfs, but now I'll just use it to have a good hdd install without a broken apt-get system. I'd like to try the KNOPPIX DVD eventually anyway....
KANOTIX doesn't have a DVD version, does it?
TIA,
AJG
No, there's no official DVD version. It wouldn't make much sense either, as Kanotix is designed for hd install and you can apt-get any package from the Debian repositories.KANOTIX doesn't have a DVD version, does it?
OK, I finally broke down and resized sda2 to about 70GB and deleted sda3 to make it about 70GB formatted ext2.
I didn't have time to do it, but next I will install KANOTIX on sda3 using grub. I assume kanotix-installer is similar to knoppix-installer and that I can use grub, right?
TIA,
AJG
Yes, Kanotix will install grub as boot manager. You can launch the Kanotix installer from the Kanotix menu.

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