Installing Hardy into a 'wasted' partition

[Amedee Van Gasse (ub)]

On Thu, February 4, 2010 07:48, john d. herron wrote:
> Hi, all.
> I'm quite confused and need some really elementary advice.
> I'd like to install Hardy (AFAIK it's the last kde 3.x distro) into a
> partition that still contains bits and pieces of a wasted Dapper version.
> This ext3 partition holds 12 GB.
>
> Three questions:
> 1. Do I need to manually empty the Dapper partition first, or would
> reformatting it take care of that?

Reformatting will take care of that.

> 2. I'd like to have all of Hardy in this one partition, with swap in a
> separate one.
>     The install CD offers a number of choices for mount points. What
> would be the most reasonable or logical choice?

/ for your Hardy partition and swap for your swap, but I may have
misunderstood your question.

> 3. At some point in the install procedure the CD prompts for a 'computer
> name'. Is it essential ?

Yes, you have to give your computer a name, but if you are a home user, it
doesn't really matter what that name is. It's useful if you have more than
one computer, to be able to identify them for example when you are working
in a terminal. There are more reasons, most of them quite technical, but I
won't go into them for now. I will just refer you to an internet standard:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html
Just give your computer a name that is easy to remember and to type.
If you need suggestions, take a look at http://namingschemes.com/

-- 
Amedee