At last count, I have three versions of Linux, namely Redhat, Mandrake and Slackware (thanks MikeV). I have decided to install Redhat for the simple reason that it makes the best screenshots. The fact that I am using Redhat in no way prejudices me towards or away from any other version of Linux... I just like wizards, OK?

The installation of Linux is pretty straightforward. I am going to be using the following table as a guideline for the size of each partition that I am going to be creating in Linux. Now, because Linux does not have any drive letters to denote a different partition, you could create a partition for each and every directory of you installation. But, I prefer this configuration. It lets you delete and restore different versions of linux without too much hassle, or loss of personal data.

It is best to install Linux from a bootable CD. Almost all the .ISO files I have seen off the net that contain Linux distributions have been bootable. If you cannot boot from your CD-ROM, then the Linux distribution will provide a program to create a bootable disk.

The first point I need to get involved is when the Disk Druid is invoked. As we can see from the picture below, we have 1114 Megs to play with. Click on the "ADD" (or hit F1) button, to add your first partition.

Below you can now see that a new partition has been included in our list, and this one has a mount point. We now need to repeat the procedure for each of the following mount points: /usr ; /usr/local ; /var ; /home

The procedure is slightly different for the SWAP drive. This is Linux's virtual memory area, and actually needs to be on a completely different partition to everything else. You set it up like you see in the screen shot below:

You do not need to specify a mount point, because as soon as you select Linux Swap as your file type, it will automatically name the mount point Swap partition. I have selected to let the partition grow to fill the rest of the drive. If you had wanted to, you could have created the Swap partition first, and the rest of the mount point partitions in any order so that your /usr partition was the last to be created and use the rest of the drive. The option is entirely up to you. Which ever way you do decide to install it, make sure you remember the partition number for your ROOT mount point (" / "), which in this case is hda8. This is going to be important later. This is a view of your drive after all the linux partitions have been created:

Click OK, and Yes to save the settings. Then format each partition. This next screen that I am showing, is one of the most important to a mulitbooting system. It is important that you choose the second option, to install the LILO on the hda8 partition. If you use the first option, then you will be using Linux's boot manager to select which OS you want to use, and it will not be able to boot you into DOS 6.22 (at least, not in the configuration we have setup on this system).