3 Days Wasted Trying To Make Linux Work. 1036

I never tried SuSE Linux.

While I never tried to install Fedora Core 5, I have installed Red Hat Linux 5.0, 6.0, 6.2, 7.3, 9 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and CentOS 4.2 (like RHEL 4). On the Red Hat Linux 5 machine there was already a Windows 95 OS there that I wanted to keep. On the CentOS 4.2 there was already a Windows XP Home already there. Previously I installed Fedora Core 2 on the machine that already had Windows XP Home on it. I never had any trouble installing any of these.

Unless they have changed the installer greatly from the one in Fedora Core 2, Fedora Core 5 will not decide anything. It puts up a screen (called Disk Druid or some such thing) that shows you all the parbreastions currently existing on your hard drives, and asks if you want to keep them or what. Also asks how you want to parbreastion the free space.

The only way to get rid of your Windows parbreastion(s) is to deliberately reformat it (them).

Red Hat and Fedora installers are all pretty much the same. They are graphical (you can avoid the graphical, but I do not bother), and at the left is all kinds of help information if you want it. I suggest reading it before installing -- and as you go along.

Never ran Ubuntu. Nvidia is a video controller board, IIRC.

Before you switch from one distribution to another, you should figure out why the first one you tried (whatever it may have been; it does not matter) did not work because it sounds to me as though you are really having the same problem with all of them. True, the symptoms vary a little from one distro to another, but it seems to me you are probably getting the installation almost right, but have clobbered the existing OS, and may be writing the boot block incorrectly; i.e., not where you are expecting it.

I think typical everyday people are able to install this. They do it all the time. There are very few that have problems like yours.

-- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. V PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. ^^-^^ 22:10:01 up 17 days, 11:37, 3 users, load average: 4.24, 4.18, 4.06