Chris Drane and I have embarked on an experiment, we have installed a 40 gigabyte hard drive in my computer, in order to accommodate a number of Linux distributions. We would like to know what is the optimum size for one Linux distribution, as the Mandrake I have currently installed takes up a little over 2 gigabytes, (in a 5.5 gigabyte partition), how much more space do they needed over the the actual programme itself? There would also seem to a problem with the rest of my rather elderly computer recognising the whole of the 40 gigabytes, it seems to be able to `see' only 33 gigabytes of the new disk. Some opinions hold that when divided into separate drives it will be able to `see' the 40 gigabytes, whilst others hold that the rest of its innards need upgrading to be able to recognise the whole 40 gigabytes. I would welcome suggestions as what to try out in this new found space, I have an ambition to have an installation of Debian, installed by hand and up and running as a long term project, (I've got to learn how to work Mandrake 8 as yet), I've got Red Hat 7.1, (which I found rather `buggy', before I changed to Mandrake). Time is no problem as I retired early. Slackware 8 looks interesting, Progeny would lead in to Debian, and perhaps BSD for the challenge? Divided into 5 gigabyte chunks I would seem to have room for at least 6, and maybe 8 distributions if we can overcome this 33/40 problem. John Seago, (attempting things well beyond his capabilities)