Burning distro to 700mb CD and formatting it to autoinstall in drive.

It would be nice to specify the motherboard and chipset.

A good all-rounder is properly Ubuntu... Pretty much all Linux is lightweight.

amdfangirl is right on, use an Ubuntu or Fedora Live CD, make a partition on your HDD and store your files on there.

Boot from the Live CD, partition and format your disk and you're ready to roll.

Your drive is likely to be /dev/sda split it into 2 or 3 partitions

Partition Filesystem Size

/dev/sda1 NTFS 100-400GB

/dev/sda2 ext3 100-200GB


Format /dev/sda2 as ext3 ( default Linux filesystem ), store the files there, when you get whatever OS you get from the evil empire copy the files from the ext3 partition to the NTFS partiton and you're all set!

You can remove or shrink the ext3 partition later on if you don't need it, although I would suggest you keep it and install a Linux distribution on it as another OS. Linux is awesome to have around in case your other OS decides to go crazy on ya.

GL

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

Find a download mirror near you and download ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso for Ubuntu and Fedora-9-x86_64-Live.iso for Fedora.

Burn them to CD-R, flip a coin and put one of them in your CDROM drive and set your BIOS to boot from CD, boot up and enjoy

Ubuntu, Knoppix and Fedora have some of the best Live CDs or DVDs you can get and they have done all the hard work for you.

If you want to make your own custom disk you can remaster an existing Live CD / DVD ISO -- the process can get complicated though.

The easiest, fastest, most hassle free way to do what you want to do is to use a premade Live CD or DVD image from one of the 3 major distributions mentioned earlier.

Ubuntu, Knoppix and Fedora have point and click graphical paritioning tools such as gparted or qtparted that you can use to partition the disk if the command line versions of parted and fdisk are not your style.


fdisk may look intimidating but is really not that bad at all

fdisk /dev/sda

p to print

m for help

n to make a new partition



Command (m for help): m
Command action
a toggle a bootable flag
b edit bsd disklabel
c toggle the dos compatibility flag
d delete a partition
l list known partition types
m print this menu
n add a new partition
o create a new empty DOS partition table
p print the partition table
q quit without saving changes
s create a new empty Sun disklabel
t change a partition's system id
u change display/entry units
v verify the partition table
w write table to disk and exit
x extra functionality (experts only)


GL

Thank you. Although I have no idea what this means, I will be refering to your links often as I go about the process.

There is another option I am conisdering though (if you will allow me one more question). I a pretty sure that I could take my old hardrive and boot it up first, and do a data transfer to my second hard disk (the one I wish to keep). I would probably install ubuntu to the new disk and remove the old one later. I am downloading the iso image for ubuntu now. How could I install it on my new hard disk and set as my OS (with all the patitioning you mentioned) and then safely remove my old hard disk with my windows xp (Posting a guide could be sufficient. You have been incrediable helpful so far and I appreciate it)?

Thanks so much again +2

Oh good, I am really glad you told me that. I think I am going to buy a live cd and just use it. Less complicated and its like 2 dollars. Your help has been great thanks again.

As amdfangirl said you can download the live CD images for free from the internet and burn them to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs

That's what the links were for, here's those links again

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

You'll need ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso and or Fedora-9-x86_64-Live.iso

There are download mirrors all over the planet, pick one near you

If you have a fast connection it won't take more than 15-45min to download the whole 700MB ISO CD images

The remastering stuff is only relevant if you want to make your own fully customized Live CD from scratch ( as in Linux from scratch ) so forget about all that

GL

Pop the disc in before you shutdown and restart. It should automatically boot into Linux. Otherwise if this doesn't work (in BIOS) set the CD drive as first boot device, before the Hard Drive which should be second...

reboot and see what happens.

I believe the OP has used Nero...

But remember, whatever you do on the live CD won't be saved

All hail to Linux_0 the most knowledgeable Linux guy

You're too modest, linux_0. You not only know more than arguably anyone on the board, you're here to answer (and usually quite quickly) any questions or give sound advice. I'm sure I'm not alone in this sentiment.

I came to the conclusion some time ago that he is actually BORG.

Have you seen the way he recruits converts to the open source collective?[/Resistance is futile. You WILL be assimilated]