I feel really stupid for asking this...

[InfiniteZer0]

Alright... I've been using Red Hat 8/9 for some time now... and I'm relatively stupid when it comes to HD maintenance such as... Disk Partitioning... Right at this present moment in time, I'm solely running W2KP on my machine, and would like to cut off a 15G partition off my 20G HD for Linux, mainly because I only use windows for MSN Messenger...

Or... better yet... anyone know of a way to run MSN Messenger on a Linux only platform?

[gleather]

gaim (an im client program) has msn account settings as well as many others.

[bs_texas]

Try gaim.

It should be available on your Red Hat system.

The configuration allows you to sepcify a plug-in for MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc...

[InfiniteZer0]

ok... now how do i add a partition... the entire HD is formatted NTFS, and i can't get the RH 9 nor MDK 9.1 installer to recognise the hard drive as partitionable... am i going to have to reinstall W2KP with a small partition then use the rest of the disk space as a Linux partition?

[scott_R]

I wouldn't jump right into the Linux only thing until you've played around with it a little. For one thing, at least you'll have a backup in case you need to ask a question or look something up on the internet, especially if you have trouble getting your connection working immediately.
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As for disk splitting, it's relatively straight forward. Defrag your drive, then run a program to split your drive in two. I like fips, and I know it's an old program, but it's extremely easy for beginners to use. All you pretty much have to do is decide how much of your drive to use, then hit okay. The documentation is good as well, and there aren't a lot of options to distract or scare you. If you want to give it a shot, you're distro probably can do this for you too.
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Then, you'll start your install program, and you'll be presented with an option to use disk space. You might have to delete the second partition, then create a new one, but that's straightforward enough. You also might have to do this through a custom paritioning setup, but that depends on your distro. It all sounds harder than it is, and twice as scary, but as long as you make sure you're not deleting your windows partition, you're in good shape.
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Also, before you begin, make sure you have a little idea about how to use your bootloader, either lilo or grub. Your main concern, and I'd help, but I haven't used any version of windows on my box since win98, is whether to load the boot loader into the MBR, or onto a partition and then use the windows bootloader to boot linux (this is for win2000, I'm just not sure about XP). That's been well covered on this site, and a search should clear up all these details pretty quickly.
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Like I said, the first time you do it, you'll probably be nervous about hitting okay, but if you do it right, you'll be home free. Just don't rush past anything, take your time and make sure you're comfortable with the changes. Oh, and a backup wouldn't hurt either. :)

[InfiniteZer0]

Thanks Scott... I've been using linux exclusively on this computer for a while... I just got bored and thought i wanted W2KP so i deleted my RH8 partition and went full windows.... I hate this crap... so I'm gonna leave 5GB for windows and the other 15GB for RH9....

[drifterdj]

if u want, search google for amsn , ts the first link that would pop off , its an MSN clone for linux , but doesnt have all the bells and wistles of MSN


good luck

[DMR]

Originally posted by scott_R
I like fips, and I know it's an old program, but it's extremely easy for beginners to use.The problem with fips (and most, if not all, other freeware partition utilities) is that it can't handle NTFS partitions. The installation program in newer versions of Mandrake can handle NTFS, but other than that I think you'll need to use Partition Magic, which will cost you some $$.