You now have three types of installation modes, 'recommended', 'customized' and 'expert'. I chose 'customized', because I never have considered myself a Linux 'expert'. Actually, I really don't know what that means. I suppose they must exist if the "expert" option exists, but I'm not one of them. If you choose 'recommended', then you can pick and choose what and how you install.

Then you choose what you want to use the computer for. The choices are 'workstation', 'server' and 'development'. If you're looking to try Linux out and see what's up in the Linux world, then you can safely choose 'workstation'. I chose 'development', because I wanted to see a little bit more in-depth what Mandrake has to offer. If you choose server, you'll get a lot of stuff to run a web server and a network server, mail server and if you're not in this to 'serve', just to try, then you really are well enough off without the added tasks that the 'server' option entails.

Now you choose the keyboard layout. You'll want to choose one that goes with your location. That is to say, if you're in the US, then US keyboard, Spanish speaking countries, Spanish keyboard (with the famous ñ) and so on.

Then it asked me for security settings. Please choose a setting here that is in line with your particular risk level. There is 'low', 'medium' and 'high'. The levels are explained quite well during this part of the install. Evaluate your situation. Anyone that's thinking of connecting to the Internet, even using dial-up connections should choose at least 'medium'. It's not that I want to advocate paranoia, but there are some nasty people out there with, it would seem, a lot of free time on their hands which they employ practicing cyber-vandalism or worse.

Now comes partitioning time. It's probably best not to get into a treatise on partitioning hard disks. There are different strokes for different folks and different partitioning schemes for different users. Suffice it to say, there are options. The hard disk on the machine I installed Mandrake on has a Windows partition and a big chunk of unused space to install Linux on. I'm an fdisk man myself, coming from the 'new frontier' days of Linux and MS-DOS, but I recommend the use of Mandrake's 'Disk Drake' program for partitioning. You can get a pretty intricate partitioning setup from it and without raising your blood pressure. My partitions for Linux-Mandrake look like this:

/ - the root partition, for the programs necessary to run Linux, including the Linux kernel (some people prefer to give put the kernel in its own /boot partition and that's also an option)
/home - for personal files
/usr - for all the programs that you need
/var - for variable size data, like databases and e-mail that you might receive (until, of course, it's summoned to your /home directory by you)

I added a swap partition of 64 megabytes (double the 32 megabytes of RAM installed in the machine- you should do your own simple math here). A 'swap' partition is there to give you an extra boost of memory when you need it. Don't forget to make this swap partition. Disk Drake will let you do a partitioning setup like this with minimal effort. I recommend this over the default one-partition setup that is usually "sold" to new users. This affords some protection for your system in the event of the unspeakable. The above partitioning scheme is based on my own method known as the "3-5 rule". I usually set aside 10% for the /(root) and /var partitions each and then mulitply by 3 for the /home partition and then by 5 for the /usr partition (where the most space will be taken up). Then again, the /home partition is something that's a personal choice. If you have really large personal files (like MPEG videos of your trip to Paris or you're permanently connected to Napster), then you'll need to do different math here. Whatever your space needs are, Disk Drake will let you do it. I give this program two thumbs up, five penguins and five stars. Then, on to the formatting of the partitions. Now you're ready to install the Linux operating system packages.

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