currently running windows me. plan on dual booting linux. dloaded the discs for redhat linux 8 and have burned them. used partition magic 8 and added a 5 gig partition for linux (ext3) & a 1 gig swap partition. as it was creating the partition i was looking over the install guide for redhat 8. it says i need 3 partitions, a swap partition (got it), a root partition (got it), and a boot partition of 75 megs. since i will be using boot magic to choose which oper sys to boot, do i need the boot partition? if i do need it where should i place it. right now i have a 40 gig drive partitioned in this order:
5 gig win me fat32
5 gig linux ext3
1 gig linux swap
10 gig data logical

i truly am a newbie to linux. i've run multiple os's before but it was win me, 2000, and xp.
btw, i WILL be making an image of my windows & data partition before i go much further.

TIA

I've used Mandrake and WinME and i used Bootmagic with no problems, as long as you make sure it boots to Windows after the install you then configure bootmagic and you should be ok.

thanks beardedwonder, but that's not what i'm asking. do i need 2 or 3 partitions for the linux install and how should they be arranged. partition magic says i need 2 and the red hat install guide says 3.

All i can tell you is what happened with Mandrake on mine. My whole setup was:
10GB WinME (FAT32)
1GB Swap
5GB Ext3

I didn't have a boot partition, i think as long as you create a redhat floppy bootdisk you should be ok because if things go wrong you'll be able to boot off that and then create the boot partition if necessary.

Just have 2 partitions and when it asks you what bootmanager you want installing pick none so boots to windows. Then configure bootmagic.

thanks all. will try this afternoon or tonight.

delete all the partitions you created for linux and leave them as free space the RedHat install will identify the free space and automatically partition for you Now all you have to do is boot from the redhat cd and install, the dual boot will be set up during the install. I did this a couple of weeks ago and it worked perfectly

A swap file of 350 mb is all u need for linux. This is not a necessary but speeds up the linux OS. Any boot manager will do. LILO, GRUB or Bootmagic all do the job.

Can recommend SuSE.............open source for the geeks.