Re: questions about linux..again

[Bryan Smart <bsmart@pobox.com>]

Mat,

At 02:03 AM 6/29/98 -0400, you wrote:
>installing linux.  I was told that it wouldnt be a smart idea to format my
>harddrive so i could get win95 totally off and then put a dos vertion on
>my laptop.  Something about i would lose all the cdrom and soundcard
>drivers.  

Your laptop probably came with all of the drivers for your CDROM,
soundcard, video card, and other periferals already installed.  If you must
re-install Windows '95, you will need to be sure that you (1) have all of
the drivers on floppies (or some other place safe) and (2) that you (or
someone else) will be able to install them.  If you're not comfortable with
doing this in '95, then formatting your drive may not be a good idea.

There is a program called Partition Magic from Power Quest that will allow
you to repartition your drive with out loosing any data.  The program comes
with a text mode utility that will run in DOS.

You may be able to get a free program called FIPS to work, but I've heard
people tell of mixed results with regards to it, so you'll need to make the
decision to use it or not.

>Now, my question is, can i go to the dos box, make a partission for linux
>and somehow tell it to install to that partission?  What I see as the
>problem is the windows 95 stuff being there.  

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking.

Most partitioning software does not like to mess with your drive while '95
is running.  You'll need to reboot into DOS to use them.

If the second part of that question is asking if you can run both '95 and
Linux on the same drive, the answer is yes, but, with a few exceptions,
they must be on separate partitions.

>for some reason, if i put a cd in the drive with win95 running, the cd
>automatically starts up.  

I'm not sure how this relates to your other questions, but I believe that
you can disable this functionality from the CDROM tab of the Multimedia
control pannel.

>It looks like i have to have djgpp to even run emac-speak for dos.  Is
>that right?  I'm totally lost as is probably obvious..smile

I believe that you've accidently confused portions of the HowTo.  DJGPP is
a C++ compiler for DOS.  If you wished to compile the Emacs source code to
run under DOS, you might use DJGPP.  You most likely want to run Emacs
under Linux, however, and thus you have no reason to compile it for DOS.

>the next thing is, I here talk about linux boxes and all that, is that
>just like a dos box or is it totally seperate hardware?  and do i need it?  

A Linux box is just another way of refering to a machine on which to run
Linux.

Best,

--
Bryan R. Smart
E-Mail: bsmart@pobox.com
Phone: (843) 953-2721, (843) 953-2571