I want to test the fedora distribution in parallel to an installed Mandrake distribution ; my questions are :
- can I install it in parallel onto a separate HD partition :
Yes, you can.
then what is the basic procedure starting from a complete set of CD's that I can get by buying a dedicated magazine,
Follow the instructions shown in the magazine.
- can I select either mandrake or fedora distribution at boot : possibly with lilo bootloader,
When the FC3 installer asks you to select where to install the bootloader, tell it to install grub in the partition you're installing FC3 to (rather than the MBR). Your computer will boot only into Mandrake at this point but you should be able to configure your existing Mandrake bootloader, whether it be LILO or grub, to boot Fedora too. Simply chain-load the grub loader from the Fedora partition, just the same as how you would boot Windows if it was installed in the Fedora partition.
- can I share some data between both distributions : /home and possibly "/usr/local" for some compiled softwares.
This is possible but you may have problems if SELinux is enabled in FC3 - it may add attributes to your filesystems that the Mandrake OS does not understand.
Paul.
