Installing Mandrake 9.1 over Redhat 8

[Exempt]

Hello,

I currently have Redhat 8 & Windows XP on my system... But due to a hardware upgrade (motherboard) and a recent (and typical) Windows reinstall, Linux at first wasnt even booting... I figured that progblem out... But now my mouse dosnt work... Due to this I cant examine any furthur problems... Im sure that after some help on here I could get it working again... But I recently heard some bad things about Redhat, monopolizing, its the 'Microsoft of Linux', blah blah blah, and I just heard its overall not the best distro, ect... Not sure how true they are, but I wanted to switch to the Mandrake distro anyways... Try out a few diff ones...

My question is what would be the easiest way to do this? Completely remove the Linux partition? Or will the Mandrake install see the Redhat and try to over write it? Also, I know the Redhat installer was easy enough as far as partitions and such go, is the Mandrake install like this aswell? What are the chances it will wipe out my Windows partitions?

Thanks in advance!

[OmarSerenity]

If you remember the order that your partitions are in (really just where the WinXP partition is), there really isn't alot of worry about it wiping it out. When you get to Disk Partitioning, don't fall into the trap of 'Use existing partitions', but choose instead 'Custom disk partitioning'. You'll see the partitions just like they are in Redhat, but you won't see the names of the mount points, just /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, etc. If you remember which is which, you can just click on each one and set the Mount point for it (it might already have a mount point set up for WinXP). After you are done setting the mount points, click 'Done' and let it write the partition table....it'll take you to a screen that asks you which partitions you want to format. Make sure that the partition that holds WinXP is not checked (it shouldn't be)....you can try to uncheck /home partition if you have one to keep your browser settings, but I'm not 100% sure that Redhat's /home directory is set up like MDK's and is compatible, so you do that at your own risk. ;-)