Well first off, I am brand new to linux all together which doesn’t help at all.
I’m also trying to install and older version of openSUSE(10.3), because it came with a book that was purchased a while back.
And ontop of all that already frustrating stuff I’m using an incredibly old system to mess around with linux and get used to it before I put it on the system I use regularly.
The system I am installing on has windows 98 (told ya it was older) and only 128MB of RAM. In my book, it is recommended to have at least 256MB, but your safest with 512MB or more. However, I also understand that this wouldn’t effect everything and that I could still learn the basics.
After all that, my issue is this. While in the installation openSUSE is not recognizing windows 98, so the automatic partition will not overwrite windows 98 for me.
I came to the conclusion I need to go into the expert install and delete the partition for win98 myself. However, when I manage to get there (with very great difficulty), it will not let me delete the win98 partition because it says it needs it for a swap.
I’m incredibly frustrated and have tried just about everything.
My last resort was to remove win98 all together and install openSUSE 10.3 without windows on the hard drive so I could bybass this problem. However I’ve forgotten just about all DOS commands for formating the hard drive and had no success doing so.
With only 128 MB RAM, the installer definitely needs swap space, which
explains why your Windows partition is busy.
Do you have a bootable floppy for your system? If so, you should boot
with it, then enter the command fdisk, which will allow you to delete
the original partition and create two new ones. The first should be
~500 MB in size with the second occupying the rest of the disk. After
you do this, you should reboot and ‘format c:’. At that point, the
Linux installer should put its swap file on the first partition, and
install the system on the other one.
One of my systems has only 128 MB RAM and it works very well; however,
it does not run X - the graphical interface. With X, there will be a
lot of swapping.
With only 128 MB RAM, the installer definitely needs swap space, which
explains why your Windows partition is busy.
Do you have a bootable floppy for your system? If so, you should boot
with it, then enter the command fdisk, which will allow you to delete
the original partition and create two new ones. The first should be
~500 MB in size with the second occupying the rest of the disk. After
you do this, you should reboot and ‘format c:’. At that point, the
Linux installer should put its swap file on the first partition, and
install the system on the other one.
One of my systems has only 128 MB RAM and it works very well; however,
it does not run X - the graphical interface. With X, there will be a
lot of swapping.
Larry
i dont believe i have a bootable floppy. this is an HP that came with 3 recovery CDs which i have used twice now to get win98 back on the computer and in some sort of working order.
I would recommend using a Live CD (a linux distro that boots from CD). The GParted Live CD is one such partitioning tool. The openSUSE Live CD should also allow you to modify/delete your existing hard drive partition(s) with the yast partitioner tool.
As you have a limited amount of memory, I think you should consider using a light-weight desktop like Xfce.
openSUSE installation can guide you through erasing the whole computer. My opinion - forget about win98. Wipe e.thing away and install openSUSE to the entire drive. Create a 100MB /boot partition , and a 512 MB swap partition, and 8GB for / and the rest for home.
you are not likely to be successful or happy with the results of your experiments…
you didn’t mention the hard drive size…wait: this is important, go ahead and
install XP or better yet, Vista (as any machine which will run the V will make
10.3 FLY!) on a machine first–if you are successful maybe it IS a magic machine
with lots more ram and horsepower than you have been led to believe, if so you
should have no problems loading it up with SUSE 10.3…AND, as a bonus 10.3
installer LOOKS for XP/Vista and probably wasn’t taught how to ‘see’ antique,
TEN YEAR old systems…
otherwise, you can save yourself a LOT of time and frustration by loading a
Windows98 era Linux…hmmmmm, i don’t even know what that was, perhaps Red Hat
5-something…or where to get a copy…
my advice, if you wanna see what it is like to drive a 2008 Corvette, do not go
to the used car lot and crawl into a worn down 1998 model…
–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark