Linux on IBM T42?

Does anyone run linux on a T42, like redhat or fedora? I'd like to dual boot my laptop, but I'm not sure how that works with the hard drive, since it has a partition set aside for recovery. Does anyone has a link that discuses this? i tried www.linux-laptop.net, but the site is down.

 

Doesn't the laptop have to be specifically set up for Linux? Like if its setup for Windows, it can't run Linux. I think.

 

i have an older laptop that is set up for win95, but it is running linux.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by happysquidman
Doesn't the laptop have to be specifically set up for Linux? Like if its setup for Windows, it can't run Linux. I think.
<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>

Not true at all. Booting into an OS only references the Master Boot Record and/or boot managers. Single OS machines only use the MBR. Dual/multibooting uses a bootloader program at startup to select which OS you want to use. All Linux and BSD distros give you the option of installing a bootloader when you install them, unlike Windows, which always assumes it's going to be the only OS. That's why you always install Windows first before installing Linux.

On Linux for Thinkpad
http://thinkwiki.org/ThinkWiki is a great site devoted to Linux-on-Thinkpad knowledge.

On Red Hat and CentOS
Hey, punksteve, you should also look at CentOS Linux. It's an exact clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, compiled from the publicly released source RPMs. Only difference is that all "Red Hat" references are replaced w/ CentOS. The keepers of CentOS promises software updates within 24 hours of Red Hat's own releases. RHEL/CentOS is the more stable version of Red Hat while Fedora is actually the test bed for new features. RHEL/CentOS also has a more tightly integrated feature set for cooperating in w/ Windows machines over network, like Active Directory for file sharing and stuff.

I went to Duke and I know that they're replacing their Sun workstations this this summer with Dell x86 workstations running CentOS. That's a pretty big vote of confidence as far as I'm concerned toward the reliability of CentOS.


On Partitioning
You shouldn't have to worry about touching your Restore partition. You should use either Partition Magic or its Linux clone QtParted to just shrink your main Windows partition. Just be sure to run a thorough Scandisk and Defragmentation before resizing. Red Hat's Anaconda installer interface is completely graphical; consequently, selecting the empty space to repartition for Linux is mouse-driven and straightforward. No dizzying fdisk nightmares like in BSD. Heh. @__@

If you're gonna be using it as a RHEL, just use a single major partition. Don't bother slicing out separate partitions for /, /bin/, /usr/, /var/, and /temp/. Separate partitions are recommended on servers b/c it prevents the whole system from suffering filesystem damage. I highly doubt you'll use your Thinkpad as a server, so just make it simple. ^_~


P.S. If you don't want to shell out money for PatitionMagic, use SystemRescueCD ( http://www.sysresccd.org/ ). It's a live CD to boot right into system utilities, one of which is QtParted.