In most cases, YaST proposes a reasonable partitioning scheme that can be accepted without change. YaST can also be used to customize the partitioning, but only experienced users should change partitioning.

When you select the partitioning item in the suggestion window for the first time, the YaST partitioning dialog displays the proposed partition settings. To accept these settings, click Accept Proposal.

To make small changes in the proposal, select Base Partition Setup on This Proposal and adjust partitioning in the next dialog. For completely different partitioning, select Create Custom Partition Setup. In the next dialog, choose the disk to partition or Custom Partitioning. For more information about custom partitioning, refer to Section 8.5.5, “Using the YaST Partitioner”.

The partitioning scheme proposed should have sufficient disk space. If implementing your own partitioning scheme, consider the following recommendations concerning the requirements for different system types.

The requirements in Table 3.2, “Space Requirements” cover only the disk space needed for the system itself. Personal data, such as documents, music files, and images, require additional space.

3.7.1.1. Resizing a Windows Partition

If a hard disk containing a Windows FAT or NTFS partition is selected as the installation target, YaST offers to delete or shrink this partition. This functionality is especially useful if the selected hard disk contains only one Windows partition that covers the entire hard disk. If YaST sees that there is not enough space on the selected hard disk, but that space could be made available by deleting or shrinking a Windows partition, it presents a dialog in which to choose one of these two options.

Figure 3.1. Possible Options for Windows Partitions

If you select Delete Windows Completely, the Windows partition is marked for deletion and the space is used for the installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise.

	Deleting Windows
If you delete Windows, all data will be lost beyond recovery as soon as the formatting starts.

To shrink the Windows partition, interrupt the installation and boot Windows to prepare the partition from there. To prepare all Windows file systems:

• Run scandisk

• Run defrag

• Temporarily deactivate the swap file (Windows optimizations)

After these preparations, return to the Linux partitioning setup and select Shrink Windows Partition. After a quick check of the partition, YaST opens a dialog with a suggestion for resizing the Windows partition.

Figure 3.2. Resizing the Windows Partition

The first bar graph shows how much disk space is currently occupied by Windows and how much space is still available. The second bar graph shows how the space would be distributed after the resizing, according to YaST's current proposal. See Figure 3.2, “Resizing the Windows Partition”. Accept the proposed settings or use the slider to change the partition sizing (within certain limits).

If you leave this dialog by selecting Next, the settings are stored and you are returned to the previous dialog. The actual resizing takes place later, before the hard disk is formatted.

	Writing to NTFS Partitions
By default, the Windows versions NT, 2000, and XP use the NTFS file system. SUSE Linux Enterprise includes basic write access support to the NTFS file system, but this feature has limited functionality. This means you can read your Windows files from Linux or overwrite them, but you cannot extend or remove them.

SUSE Linux Enterprise contains a number of software packages for various application purposes. Click Software in the suggestion window to start the software selection and modify the installation scope according to your needs. Select your categories from the list in the middle and see the description in the right window. Each category contains a number of software packages that meet most requirements for that category. For more detailed selection of software packages to install, select Details to switch to the YaST Package Manager.

You can also install additional software packages or remove software packages from your system at any time later. For more information, refer to Section 8.3.1, “Installing and Removing Software” .

Figure 3.3. Installing and Removing Software with the YaST Package Manager

To change the system language or to configure support for secondary languages, select Language. Select the language from the list. The primary language is used as the system language. To have support for other languages, select these languages as secondary languages. For more information, see Section 8.5.13, “Language Selection”.

The Overview tab in the Installation Settings dialog provides only basic options. If you are an advanced user and want to configure booting or change the time zone or default runlevel, select the Expert tab. It shows the following additional entries not contained on the Overview tab: