Which version.

[Dodge]

For someone just starting out with linux. Which version would you all recomend?

I have two hard drive. 13gig and 60. 13 gig is not parititioned and has 98se on it. 60gig has 3 partitions running 2000 and XP Pro. I dont want to lose any of these OS's.

So which version of Linux would be best to start with?

Thanks

[R4NG3R]

Well, i just started out. RedHat 9 has a good GUI. I'm not sure about Mandrake. I'd go with RedHat 9. The hard drives... hmmm.
I'd go with the 13 gig. If you use 98se then parition half and half or 2/3 Windows and 1/3 Linux. Unless you are comfortable with doing it on the 60 gig. But i'd stick with the 13 just in case.

[Dodge]

Thats what I was thinking on the partition. Just use the 13 gig drive. Probably a 2/3 split.

I may go with Redhat. Am reading on how the booting works. Want to make sure I dont screw up my XP partition....lol

Thanks.

[R4NG3R]

Yes true that. Good Luck! We need more Linux users around here eh?

[PostCode]

I've never really been a big fan of Drake myself. It always had the latest and greatest of everything and seemed to be touchy in some areas. I hated the way they implemented things in it alwell, but that's more just me. I'm used to RedHat. I've used it on occasion since version 5.2. I'm just more familiar with it.

I do know a few guys that would swear by Mandrake distro though. Some say it's just a more stable system. I don't know though. I never had in on my system long enough at any given time to determine long term stability. Most of the problems I had was with programs crashing right from startup.

I like the way Red Hat installs more then Drake too, particularly the way the selection of individual packages and the configuration of the X Server is concerned. Very good layout.

With RedHat 8 came the introduction of BlueCurve, the unified Gnome and KDE desktop. They have improved on it a lot under Red Hat 9. Personally, I think it's probably the most stable desktop I've ever used.

[ceh383]

I've used SuSE 6.4, Red Hat 6.0, 7.0, 7.3, 8.0, 9.0, and I just installed Slackware 9. As far as installation goes, RH 8.0 & 9.0 were the easiest by far. That's the up side, the down side, you end up with a bunch of stuff installed that you(at least I) really don't want or need. Slackware took longer to install, had to figure out manual partitioning and which packages I wanted/needed. Once installed, I like Slack much better........

As for dual booting......I gave up on that a long time ago, so I am of no help on that issue.

[R4NG3R]

hey can you guys help me out... down there on the OMG HELP! section?

[Dodge]

PC and Chuck, thanks for the input. I've never heard of Slack. I dont care how long it take to install as I figure it will take me awhile the first time anyways. Just tired of windows and want to take on a new challenge.

Got to have the dual booting though. One thing though, I keep seing that it supports dual booting, does it support multiple OS's?

Well, will probably go with Redhat then. Thank you all for the input.

[ceh383]

I know you can dual boot Slackware with Windows 9x. But if you are using 2k/XP with NTFS partitions I'm not sure it would be able to read them.

Dual boot Linux and Win9x (http://www.slackware.com/book/index.php?source=x1776.html)

[PostCode]

Make sure that when you go to install packages during the Red Hat install to select the option to select individual packages. You can get rid of a lot of things that aren't needed this way as well as install things that you might need, like Licq and some editors that aren't installed by default.

[smurfy]

Dodge, "dual booting " is something of a misnomer. "Multi-booting" is probably better.
NT's bootloader (the one you'll be using to select between 98/2k & XP) is not much different to a Linux text bootloader (Lilo or Grub) in appearance.
Configuring your NT bootloader is a matter of understanding the boot.ini file.
Configuring the Linux bootloader can be done by either manual edit of the LILO.conf (or GRUB.conf???) file or by using a GUI front end available in most of the latest "consumer" distros.
What I found easiest when adding Linux to a system with multiple windows boots was to end up with a two level boot menu. 1st level was the linux bootloader which had "windows" which then gave us the NT Bootloader.

As for distros...
Seems to me the more I look around and stick stuff on this PC, it's the Desktop environment version that makes the biggest difference. Otherwise there is not usually a big "user noticeable" difference between them. From what I can see of the latest RedHat, it's not much different to the Mandrake 9 that I've just installed because KDE3 is common to both of them.
Mandrake KDE's menus have been considerably "dumbed down" to the extent they seem more like Lindows or Lycoris.

I've heard good things about Slackware BUT wouldn't think of trying it as my first Distro.

As far as I'm concerned, any Linux distro that REQUIRES the user to use the command line is not much use for a Windows user to get their feet wet. A Linux distro that ENABLES the user to use the command line is fine.
It's much like Windows/DOS. You don't expect to have to use DOS commands in Win2000/XP but sometimes it's darned handy to know how if you need to.

So as a first step, I would go for either of the 2 biggies (RedHat or Mandrake) or a Windows clone (Lycoris or Lindows). If you have the space, there's gret benefit to be had in having more than one at a time.

[Dodge]

Thanks Smurfy. I am looking at Lycoris right now. Will try to get Redhat downloaded. Seems like the sites I've tried so far have been extremely slow for some reason.

Maybe Monday I'll time to get it downloaded.

Thank you all for the input here. I do appreciate it. Will be an experience trying to get it configured to work with my existing windows....:)

[ceh383]

If I may make one small suggestion before undertaking this task........

BACK UP YOUR DATA

Just in case.......:D

[R4NG3R]

Dodge, have you tried www.linuxiso.org ? worked for me, but it took me 3 hours with cable modem. good luck!

[Dodge]

CEH, I will most definately do that. I figure I may screw it up the first time around...lol But, I'm going to do alot of reading and make sure to print out anything I need before I start.

R4NG3R I will take a look at that link. I've been losing my Satelite service for the last few days. Seems to be getting worse. May just get rid of the satelite all together and go with a better service that is compatible with Linux also. Which as we all Know anything is better than AOL... :D

Am going to talk to a guy at work tonight and see what versions of linux he has. may just get it from him for now....


Am curious about one other thing. I can't seem to find if my modem will work under linux or not. It is a US Robotics 2976 Sportster 56K PCI Voice Modem (http://www.digiconcepts.com/usrobotics_modems_01.htm) Hardware Modem not Winmodem. Says for 95,98,nt4.0... Doesn't mention linux though...

[ceh383]

Have a look HERE (http://www.idir.net/~gromitkc/dips/roster.html)
Look at the Texas Instruments chip sets.....there may be hope......

[Dodge]

Thanks Chuck. I'll take a look at that. I'm downloading linux now from the link mentioned above.

[Dodge]

Well I give up on downloading these stupid things. So I decided to order them. $4.89 each for Redhat and mandrake. Lot less headache....:D

Also found the drivers for my modem at USR's site. So that shouldn't be a problem....

[R4NG3R]

ah, that's cheap. I went to Office Depot and i saw RedHat 9 and it was $40... i was like, hahaha, mine was free! lol, good luck dodge

[twistedcranium]

Originally posted by R4NG3R
ah, that's cheap. I went to Office Depot and i saw RedHat 9 and it was $40... i was like, hahaha, mine was free! lol, good luck dodge


Keep this in mind....

Windows XP Professional (full non-upgrade) ...$300 US
Windows XP Professional (upgrade)....$200 US
Windows XP Home (full)....$200 US
Windows XP Home (upgrade)...$100 US

so $40 US for a superior (imho) operating system, and some support and updating extras, as well as the documentation CD and the source code CDs is WELLLLLLLL worth it!

Also....while we all dig the fact that Linux can be aquired without plunking down any money...remember that this is a cause we should all help further....so send a linux effort some money and help further linux development. Every so often, buy a copy of your favorite distro, support the cause. Just because Linux is open source, doesn't mean it is going to survive on the unpaid efforts of the tons of programmers that involve themselves with it alone. No such thing as "FREE BEER"!

(*ok, soapbox is yours folks...LOL*)

[ceh383]

One thing I'm finding out here, setting up my HP952c was much easier in Red Hat than it is in Slackware.

[twistedcranium]

Originally posted by ceh383
One thing I'm finding out here, setting up my HP952c was much easier in Red Hat than it is in Slackware.

Sounds like the issue I had with an old 166MHz pentium machine that I loaded both Caldera (before the SCO days) and Mandrake 6.something on. Mandrake wouldn't recognize the network card, and Caldera didn't recognize the video card and a few other things. Distro's matter as to what they build into their kernel and just which kernel level they use too.

[ceh383]

Ok,

I figured out the HP952c. It turnes out that Windoze and Linux have one major thing in common......

Operator error makes things much more difficult than they need to be.

The fix was simple, a line in the /etc/printcap file needed to be commented out. I must have looked at that file 20 times without seeing the problem. Glad I looked at it 21 times.....:eek:

[Dodge]

Glad you got it going Chuck. Operator faults are quite a few and not so far between....;) :D

[Dodge]

Got Redhat 9 and Mandrake 9.01 in today. Excellant site to order from.

Installation was a bit of pain as for some reason my 13gig hd has got some problems. Bad sectors. So I was unable to get Partition Magic 8 to partition it. SO Installed Redhat on a partition on my 60gig drive. Works great. Bootloader works great and am able to access all the windows drives.

No I've got alot of learning to do with the new OS. Thanks for all the advice given here.

[ceh383]

Have fun.....:rock:

[Dodge]

I'm sure I will. I spoke to soon yesterday. Win/XP wont boot now. Getting error messages. So tomorrow when I get home I have got to figure that crap out.:(

Ohwell, leave it to M$ to mess up..........:D

[twistedcranium]

Hope that you have an XP boot disk handy....:eek:

[Dodge]

Yep got all 6 of them. Just created the other day to test something for a member here.

Don't have one for 2000 yet. It's screwed up also. Missing a file. Will try to install that file and see what happens. No big loss with either OS though....