UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm a brand new Intro to Unix to student, and what I'm trying to do is install Gentoo Linux onto a Dell Latitude (currently w/ out any OS). I've already burned the iso to cd and am wondering... All the reading I'm doing is talking about partioning, since this dell won't be having a pre-existing OS, partioning will not be needed. So... Do i just drop the cd in, start up the laptop and install it? or does the iso need an pre-existing os?

I know this all sounds lreally lame, but like I said, I'm an intro student and looking for something to just use to learn off of.

disk partitioning WILL be needed, but dont worry its not a hard thing to do at all, gentoo's website have very good instructions, there install method is not pretty GUI fluff, but the outline and give specific instrutions on which commands to give, they tell you everything, their instructions are very good. an ISO image does not need an existing OS, what an ISO image is is basically the whole cdrom in one file that can be burned to cd. so all you do is put the cd in your drive and go into bios to select to boot from cd. then thats it,. have the computer boot and it will load the ISO and then your off. disk partitioning is important, and no matter what if you had a previously installed OS or if its a brand new drive, when you are installing a new OS you will always have to play around with the disk partitioning. gentoo is a great distro, my next box i build will be running gentoo, i am not currently using it on anything but a good friend of mine has, and i was impressed with gentoo's presentation, it is a quality distro. however, you dont really sound too familiar with some important topics, i wouldnt recommend against trying gentoo, but its not a unexpierienced user friendly distro. i would suggest that you go for it, and follow all their instructions, most likley things will go fine and you will have a nice new freshly installed os, but if things dont work out, and you are just stuck and no one can help you, suse linux 8.1 is insanely easy to install and setup, i burned an ISO image, booted from that, and did ftp install. it configured everything pretty much on its own, some things here and there i changed, swap space etc...but the simple answer to your question is, yes, all you do is burn the ISO to cdrom and boot from that. good luck.

thanks for the reply, I've been checkin out Suse, but Gentoo seemed to have much better response in popularity.