Partition Perdition

Once you've chosen a distribution to install, the actual installation process is relatively easy. One question that will confront you (for which you may not be prepared) relates to partitioning. By partitioning your hard disk(s), you will decide how much space to dedicate to Windows, and how much to dedicate to Linux.

File System Wisdom
One of the tasks of the operating system is to move information to and from your hard drive. Every time you copy, delete, move, or save a file on your computer, the operating system tells the computer how to handle the information. Windows and Linux have entirely different ways of doing this. Predictably, they do not share the same space on a hard disk very well. Instead, to allow them to coexist peacefully, you will have to construct two separate spaces on your hard disk -- one for Windows, and one for Linux. This process is called partitioning.

Most likely, your computer came pre-installed with Windows, meaning you never had to break out the Windows installation disk to get your computer up and running. Even if you did install the operating system yourself, you probably never dealt with the issue of partitioning your hard drive. When Windows was installed, it claimed all of the available space on the hard disk, whether it needed it or not.

Since Linux will need its own space to operate in, you will need to "repartition" the hard disk to make room. Most of the Linux distributions are fully capable of repartitioning your hard disk. You will simply have to decide how much space to leave for Linux. Most distributions these days will happily install in a 10 gigabyte partition (give or take a few gigabytes), but you may want to leave more room for data.

Before you repartition your hard disk, you must back up the information on the disk. There is a chance your data could become corrupted during the partitioning process. This is not optional. Really. I did it, and so can you.

To repartition the disk, your distribution's installation software will have to read your Windows files and move them all to one part of the hard disk. Some distributions do a better job at this than others. But all of them are doing very little better than you would do reading a foreign language you learned in high school. You might do a passable job, but you may miss some things here and there. So make a backup. You've been warned.

If you choose, you can leave the partitioning to software like Norton Partition Magic. This does not keep you from having to back up your Windows data, but you might have a bit more confidence in it. It can read a few types of Linux file systems, and even create Linux partitions for your installation program to use.

If you have any discomfort with the partitioning process, don't install Linux. You can work off the Live disk, or ask one of your computer-expert buddies to help. Partitioning hard disks is not for the timid.

Choosing a file system
When you partition the hard disk, you'll have to choose a file system for Linux to use. Just as Linux offers any number of kernels, shells, and desktops, it also offers different ways to store information on the hard disk. The two principal systems are Reiserfs and ext3. Other file systems may be available, but you should probably choose one or the other of these unless your installation software recommends otherwise.

For practical purposes, there is little to recommend one file system over the other. Technical types will find advantages and disadvantages of each. My experience leads me to believe that ext3 is a bit more widely used, and Reiserfs is a bit of a bias of SuSE. I've also found my ext3 partitions to be a bit more stable and somewhat easier to recover when errors occur, but you may have a different experience. If your installer has default file system options, you're probably best off agreeing with them.

Reading Foreign Systems
After you've installed Linux and it's up and running, the first thing you'll likely want to know is where all of your old data have gone. Your Windows data will be in your Windows partition. You won't necessarily be able to run your Windows software (although we'll discuss in the future some ways to cheat and run it anyway). However, many of your Windows files can still be read by Linux software. For example, your word processing documents and spreadsheets can probably be opened by Linux software such as Openoffice.

Many distributions will read data from your Windows partition from within Linux pretty easily. Windows, however, uses a few different file systems. The main ones these days are NTFS (Windows 2000 and XP) and FAT32 (older versions of Windows). You don't necessarily need to know what file system your Windows software used in order to read the documents you stored on the Windows partition. However, Linux cannot write very well to NTFS -- so if you happen to have used this format, you will need to copy these files over to your Linux partition to edit them. With many distributions, this is as simple as dragging the file over to the desktop, just as you used to in Windows.

There are some "experimental" ways to write to NTFS partitions from Linux (allowing you to edit and save files there). There are just as many horror stories from people who've wiped out their entire Windows life in mere moments by doing so. For now, it might be best to stay away from these methods.

If you need to share data between Windows and Linux, you can create a single FAT32 partition for both to use. Both Windows and Linux can read and write these partitions. The file size is somewhat limited (4 gigabytes), but you shouldn't notice any significant problems unless you're working with really huge files (such as multimedia presentations, which are going to be more challenging to share between Windows and Linux anyway). If you have files that are "mission-critical", you probably should not plan on sharing them -- just in case.

Regards