UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Please help : I have a question i am just starting to study UNIX and i need some advice,as my teacher isn,t the helpful type.

I have just formatted my pc and partitioned it with win98 and winxp, do i need to create a partion for UNIX ??? OR is UNIX run in whatever partion i want it ????

Will UNIX affect my pc if i make changes to it when practicing
thats where partioning question has come up !!!

I have a pentIII 600MB 256MB Ram, what version of UNIX do i use and were do i get it from ???

Told you i was a dummy at this !!!!

Please Help.

Daffy30,
For your question, now you want to make it as a 3 partion to support win98, XP and unix. What version of Unix did you prefer ? Linux ? FreeBSD ? anyway for all those *nix there is 2 partition you need one partition (Min: 1meg) and Swap Space (depends on you RAM Size). Before partitioning think twice of your data inside of your hdd. Anyway u didnt notify your HDD size ?? Try partition Magic to partition your hdd.

The best if you can visit the *nix vendors webpage fo
requirement and installation helps.

If I may, I'll restate what killerserv said. Depending on what type of *nix you go with, the installer should allow you to do the partitioning of the drive for Unix when installing the OS. All you need to do is create one partition of decent size and let the installer do the rest. I would read up before you do this tho. As killerserv said, you will need swap space and a few other partitions to run effectively.

Thank you for your replys, Whoops i posted Killerserv reply by mistake- "SORRY"

I will create a third partiton - 1GB i have heaps of spare space.I will use 1GB so i have room to save if needed

"UNIX DOES THIS" ??? Saving files etc yes ???

I am using partition 7 with system commander 2000 so i should be ok.

My pc PentIII 600MB 256MB RAM 30GIG Seagate Hdd.

I will try FreeBSB , i don,t know what the difference is yet. However i like anything with the word FREE in it.

THANK YOU again for both your help!!!

Heh, you will learn however, that "free" will mean "free as in speach, not free as in beer"... That you will have to do the learning and understanding of the system before you can really use it, but the software is of no charge.

FreeBSD is a great system, and so is Linux - especially for a beginner. Systems like Mandrake are built for user-friendliness, and you can download it free of charge also.

For the most part, Unix can do anything you'll see anywhere else: surfing the web, acting as a server (www, ftp, streaming media, etc...), acting as a desktop machine... whatever you want it to do.

Not to complicate things too much, but there are Unix variants / distributions that will allow you to put a Unix filesystem on a FAT32 (win98) partition. One of them is Redhat, I believe. It's usually better to create a different partition, because it's faster and functions beter, but in a pinch, you may.

I,m a little confused is there a difference between UNIX & LINUX ?

As i,m told that i should have four partitions set on my pc

1/ Win98
2/ WinXP
3/ UNIX
4/ LINUX

Am i heading in the wrong direction ?

Daffy,
Fyi, Unix and Linux is the same. Linux cames from one of the Unix variant. And yes you need partitions for your pc hdd. For win98 and xp it would be a normal partition but for the Linux (Unix / *nix), you should have at least one Swap Partition (size depends on your RAM Size) and one boot partiton in your Master HDD.

If you still getting confused on this matter, i strongly suggest you to visit the *nix vendors webpage and check the FAQ or Installation Guides.

I agree what LivinFree says " Not to complicate things too much, but there are Unix variants / distributions that will allow you to put a Unix filesystem on a FAT32 (win98) partition. One of them is Redhat, I believe. It's usually better to create a different partition, because it's faster and functions beter ".