I am a new user w/Linux-Unix, i want to know were i have to start first, install linux first or win 98 first, i have a 30-gig harddrive on my home pc , do i have enough space to run linux and 98 w/dual booting
Pls utilise the search function of the forum.
Try for {dual boot} or {multi boot}
Lots of ideas on previous discussion can be find there.
This article is for XP/Redhat but it should answer your question nevertheless.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/itmanager/technology/story/0,2000029587,20265546,00.htm
Just some info, from my experience. I had linux and 98 (98 first) set up and after 2 bad master boot crashes, i just left off the LILO and when i use linux at home i use a floppy boot disk, it was nothing but trouble, got corrupted MBR 2 times!!!! If i wasn't big on backups i'd have been in trouble, but i have 3 pcs at home and do backups so was just tedious and time consuming to re install everthing. I'm running XP now, and can still use my red hat 7.1 if i boot from floppy!!! I had the os's on two seperate hard drives too. Eventually i just want to have a dedicated linux box, but i have it at work, so haven't set it up that way at home. Good luck!
yes you can i use mandrake 8.2 works great in linux and 98
you just tell it that you want to use exeistion partion and map it out auto matickly works great but the windows side is still win98 still crashes and blue screen of death if you have a 586 or better with 64MB of ram and a good video card linux does not like winmodems at all
When install Linux. You chose LiLo (Linux Loader) is program manager boot for your PC. You chose write to "MBR" = = > Master Boot Record...
All good! you can dual boot Windows and linux //
Good Luck
P/S: Or use Partion Boot Magic...
is it that complicated ??
kkkkk
no, it's not. When installing Linux, you should be given one or two options for a boot loader. Once done with that, it should find your other OS's and make entries in the boot loader. When you reboot, a menu will show with your OS choices. Simply pick on and off you go! 
The way I dual boot linux on my comp was to install lilo on my root partiton and not the MBR, create a boot disk, boot into linux then open bash with su, and then entered dd=/dev/hda4 bs=512 count=1 > /root/linux.bin (hda4 being the root partition).
Then I copied the linux.bin file on to floppy, boot up windows and copy the linux.bin file to c:\, then edit my boot.ini file, adding the line c:\linux.bin="linux", works really well.
The easiest way to go, would be to purchase a unix software package from the store (Redhat, Mandrake, Suse). The package will tell you how to partition your hard drive.
30 gig is plenty. I only had 6 gig on my computer when I installed Redhat. I would go 15/15 gig on the partition depending on your needs and use.
You would do it over your windows 98, but make sure you know what part of your hard drive you are going to put Linux, because you need to make room for Linux by moving some of your win 98 files out of the way and putting them in a different location on hard drive. Some people do not realize this and may delete important startup files in windows.
The boot option did not come with my version of Redhat and I had to search google for a boot script, but there are several ways you could do this. Just search www.google.com
And as a previous reply had stated, to be safe:
1) Make a boot disk for Win 98.
2) Make backup copies of important files.
3) Follow directions on install of Linux.
As you've stated your new to Linux, it may pay to install Win98 first, and partation the drives there (.e.g. you can setup a NTFS D drive of 1-2 GB for linux only using the disk administrator/Disk Management). This will make the drive easily idenitifable when installing linux (using for example disk druid); where you have to partion the say, D drive further (e.g into native and swap linux drives).
Later in the linux installation (with the more recent verisons), you should be prompted if you would like the dual-boot option upon start-up. Subsquently, you should be prompted with the DOS/Linux option upon startup.