Adding a Linux PartitionI want to install Linux on a separate partition on my Windows system, but I hear it has to go into the first 6 Gb on my hard disk. Is it true and, if so, what can I do about it? It used to be true that installing Linux on a computer meant that part of it had to go into the first 6 Gb on the disk, but that is not the case any more. Now you can use a program like Acronis Disk Director Suite to create a Linux partition anywhere on your hard drive. On startup, Linux uses a small program, usually one called LILO (for Linux Loader), to get everything going. LILO works through your computer's BIOS. Until just a couple of years ago, the BIOS on Windows-based computers couldn't recognize hard disks larger than 1,024 cylinders, which works out to about 6 Gb. Of course, once the operating system was booted up and running, it could support much larger hard disks, but the BIOS couldn't. You didn't need to put all of Linux in that first 6 Gb, just LILO. This limit applied to almost all operating systems at the time, including the various versions of Windows. But since Linux was often installed as the second operating system (after Windows) on a dual-boot computer, and, since those first 1024 cylinders were often filled by Windows-related files, this was a special problem for Linux. You had to use a program to carve out a small Linux partition down in the Windows area of your disk. There were other options, such as keeping LILO on a floppy and booting from that when you wanted to use Linux, but they weren't very convenient. All this has now changed. In roughly 1997, BIOS makers started providing features called INT 13 extensions. One of the effects of INT 13 extensions was to make it possible to write loading programs that could ignore the 1024 cylinder limit. Then, not too long afterwards, the Linux community started producing versions of LILO that could use the INT 13 extensions. All versions of LILO since v22 have a feature called lba32 that can use the new BIOS features and bypass the 6 Gb/1024 cylinder limit. Current distributions of Linux now have the new version of LILO (or its equivalent in other Linux boot loaders). If you have an older version of LILO, you can upgrade by downloading the current version. If you have an older computer, one whose motherboard goes back before 1997, your BIOS might not have the INT 13 extensions. You can check with the BIOS manufacturer and probably download an updated BIOS that will support INT 13.
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