UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Sorry if this is totally the wrong place to post this but I have a question or something rather thats bugging me. I got a new Dell Inspiron laptop the other day and I was expecting it to have 80G on it, well atleast 70 or so after installation of OS and such but after looking carefully yesterday, I realised that it only had about 63G of space on it.

is that normal, surely not, I mean the capacity says that its 75G or near that number when I check but I did ask for 80G and I ended up with only about 65G. Has Dell Shafted me or is it common/normal? I would imagine yuo don't need more than 20G to install the OS do you, it has some software on it too but none of the software takes up more than 300M and when I go to add/remove applications, I can't see anything thats taken up so much space.

Where is my space?

another question, now this is relating to unix, main reason why I wanted 80G was so that I can partition the HD and install linux on it 2, so inaffect have 2 OS, should I be expecting a lot of trouble with this since I have never done it before? Any hints or tips will be greatly appreciated. Windows Home Edition came already installed on this machine too...

thanks in advance

it is a good question BTW. First the manufacturers of hard drives since 2002 respecified Kbyte, Mbyte and Gbyte and they came up with “very smart” solution to call Kb =10e3, Mb=10e6 and Gb=10e9 respectively. It allows them to sell drives as higher capacity, as the real capacity is to be measured in a real Kilo, mega and Giga as K=2e10, M=2e20 and G=2e30 respectively.
The difference is quite significant as for 100Gb drive the presupposed capacity would be
100x2e30= 107374182400 when the “their” capacity is 100x10e9, that is some 7Gb less !
After that, not all the drive capacity is accessible to data as drives aren't used as RAW drives normally, but require to be formatted. Formatting drive means introducing the system of coordinated to the drive geometry so the a position of the some particular byte may be specified to the driver which will address the data on a drive. As you can imagine, the whole space has to be mapped so it takes additional average 7% of a drive space. So it is where your gigabytes have vanished.

Addressing second question, I'm not sure what your definition of “lot a trouble is”. For my taste it had never worked before in a fashion it wouldn't drive me out of my mind and for the reason I abandoned PC platform completely and use OS X on Apple hardware exclusively.
But is entirely different subject. You can try Mandrake Linux, so far it was most polished and relatively peacefully coexisted with Windows (and easy to install in another partition as Mandrake can do it automatically).

Hope it helps.

A friend of mine managed to install Fedoracore as dual-boot on his existing Windows system, a feat which blew me away since he is not at all technical. It just worked.

Nope, I didn't have in mind that it is not doable, it is of cause but the computing if far fore than typing some commands as far as I'm concerned. As you have to split drive it results in meager volumes capacity. As most of office work naturally will be done in Windows and with little time you realize that drive wasn't divided wisely enough. Then, windows doesn't know to read ext3 volumes and if you set some rogue driver and drop/edit some files it then looses attributes in Linux and so on. I can mention LOOooooOooNgggg list of mishaps. If a task is just to try Linux to learn some commands it may be the solution, but if you use the computer as a everyday tool it becomes mind boggling. As you wok in Windows and then you recalled that there's files you need to address had been stored in Linux, and zipped with encryption, or simply drives doesn't work for you, you will be forced to reboot again, and if you run some serious Excel's table for example and in a middle of something ... That what I mean when I say it depends on definition “lot a trouble is”. OS X is free of all this hassle; it also offers ALL of the commercial tools one need to perform a job.
As long as you will have Windows on it you will not be really using Linux, as it is lacking of tools to have job done for everyday life. I mean you can do everything if you are independent completely, but as far as I have to comply with corporative standards, there's no real possibility to employ it is a way it has to be done. The compatibility of peer applications is marginal: just a little bit complex and it renders your job incorrectly. So that it was a reason (among many other) to abandon PC platform. With OS X you have luxury of all commercially available high quality software and it rides over very polished UNIX. It is solid.

man that really sucks about redefining the sizes and what not. Imagine it though, I have only about 65G on a machine that says on paper has 80G, thats totally outrageous. Would it be the same you think if I opted for a different manufacturer, would 80G end up being 65G or is DELL just over the top? I mean I can understand the use of the 7% of my space but 7% does not equal to 15G, its like I have lost 10G worth of space...

Thanks for the info though, really helps and sets things in perspective.

With the 2nd Q, I was just wondering whether I would get some problems for example installing linux on the 2nd partition as a result of maybe not creating the partition right or maybe as a result of some obsecure windows system setting preventing me from installing linux properly??. Do I have to format the HD though since my laptop already came with XP home edition installed on it before I can create the 2 partitions?

thanks

ok, you seem to have sold OS X to me but excuse me for sounding stupid, what exactly is OS X? I mean I could go and search ask.com but would be better if you told me coz you seem to like it? any links to have a look it?

thanks

If you want my personal advice, do not install any Linux on the laptop. Get CD bootable version of Linux, there are many around to download. So you just put cd in a drive and boot from it. So it takes little longer to boot, but it takes up the whole system as a normal, so you can try and play and then just remove the drive and you have done. As long as your intentions with Linux remain purely educational, or to satisfy curiosity it should be sufficient to your needs.