OK, I have a netbook with Fedora and Windows on it. I previously tried to use openSUSE 11.1 and 11.2 on it but neither one worked with the wifi (there were LONG threads on that elsewhere, it was never solved). So I installed Fedora instead (I hate Windows but other users of the netbook NEED windows on there). So here’s what I want to do (after I try it on a live USB):
Install OpenSUSE 11.3 side by side with Fedora and Windows (taking free space from Fedora)
Keep the default booting options as they are
IF openSUSE works perfectly, I want to remove Fedora and use all its space for openSUSE 11.3, and keep windows as default boot option
IF it does NOT work (like 11.2), I want to remove it and give the space back to Fedora
Can someone tell me the best/safest way to go about this?
If the question is will my Wifi work with openSUSE 11.3, why not download the LiveCD for Gnome or KDE and try it out without making a choice on your hard drive yet? This is what I would do. Make sure the NetworkManager is activated for your Wifi to work. Next, I am not an expert on Fedora, but as long as it works with the original grub (not grub2) you can run all of the OS’ from the same version of Grub and we can provide added help. I suggest you post your present menu.lst file (if you use grub) and a setup for your hard drive (total size and partition size).
Remember you can have only four primary partitions, though one can be a Logical partition and contain several logical drives. The basic need to know here is if you load grub from a partition (not the MBR) that partition must a primary one and not logical. If you load grub from the MBR, the rest of Grub can be located on a logical partition.
It is possible to share the same swap file with more than one copy of Linux. For instance you could have four primary partitions, /sda1 = Windows, /sda2 = swap, /sda3= Fedora, /sda4 = openSUSE. You could install Grub in the MBR or in the openSUSE partition using this method and share the swap partition. By placing openSUSE at the last position, the original Grub entry for Fedora can be used unchanged. If you did this way, the Grub menu will be unchanged loaded in Fedora and you could manually combine its Fedora entry with the new Grub menu.lst file added by openSUSE. This is just an example setup.