Is It Worth It? (Linux)

TommyD · #1 June 27th, 2003, 02:33 AM

I have been considering Linux for sometime now. I have downloaded the ISO's for it last night and am wonderring Is it worth the trouble? Am I going to have to download all the drivers for my pc? Are there any prefered sites for getting the drivers if needed?

TIA
Tom

twistedcranium · #2 June 27th, 2003, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by TommyD
I have been considering Linux for sometime now. I have downloaded the ISO's for it last night

Which distribution did you get? (Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Suse, Slackware, etc.)

Quote:

and am wonderring Is it worth the trouble?

Pardon the word usage....but, HECK YEAH! Linux is a great experience....for learning and for using....be sure that you're ready to spend some time reading and learning though, its not "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" as the latest versions of Windows might be.

Quote:

Am I going to have to download all the drivers for my pc? Are there any prefered sites for getting the drivers if needed?

I can honestly say that you may experience some difficulties with linux recognizing 'exotic' hardware. Most of the distributions have plenty of common hardware type drivers (modules) built-in and if not, some tweaking may be involved.

To give you an idea of the level of hardware support. I have had the same set of hardware in a pc in which I loaded Red Hat 6, 7.3, 8, and now 9. For 6 I had four devices not recognized right out of the install, which were the Canon printer I was using, the network card, a digital camera, and my palm handheld device.

When I replaced 6 with 7.3 the printer and network card were supported and detected right away, but not the other two.

When I replaced 7.3 with 8.0, the digital camera now was recognized on the serial port connection to it.

Now, I'm running Red Hat 9, and the only hardware in my system that I can't seem to get running is my palm device.

Also at RH 9 I added a scanner and it is detected as well with a nice little add on program, but granted, the scan quality doesn't seem as good as the ouput from the original scanner software in windows.

So to sum this up.....if you're interested in running Linux, you should have fewer hardware issues with newer distributions. And remember, you can always setup a dual boot system....where windows and linux can live in the same system and be selected as to which one runs at a time by a selection menu at boot up. This method is widely used, and helps if you have that one piece of hardware that just doesn't play nice with Linux, YET!

twistedcranium · #3 June 27th, 2003, 02:00 PM

I also wanted to give a quick blurb on the hardare issues in Linux.

The biggest reason that Linux is sort of finicky when it comes to hardware/drivers is that currently most hardware manufacturers ONLY make drivers for Windows, since it is too common. At the moment, it doesn't bring enough money in for those folks to run off and develop a driver for linux.

So, some linux programmers take matters into their own hands and "reverse engineer" a driver or develop a driver with a little bit of help from the manufacturer.

Since the popularity of Linux is growing, you can expect over the next few years for this hardware lag to windows disappear. The best thing we can do as linux users....keep sending the support and sales folks at your hardware vendors and tell them that you use linux and would love to have a driver to use their hardware. You're not doing anything wrong by wanting their hardware to work in a different OS...in fact...you're being a good consumer, they just need to be told that sometimes.

TommyD · #4 June 27th, 2003, 02:04 PM

I have downloaded Shrike i386 I also have an extra working drive from this pc (40 gig) that has XP on it. I was considering cleaning out some of the extra apps and using that drive as a dual boot system

twistedcranium · #5 June 27th, 2003, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by TommyD
I have downloaded Shrike i386 I also have an extra working drive from this pc (40 gig) that has XP on it. I was considering cleaning out some of the extra apps and using that drive as a dual boot system

Go for it....Red Hat will love the 40GB!!

Red Hat has a pretty decent installer as well. I've gotten very familiar with it.....you should probably do a CUSTOM install, that way, you can step through the process and learn a bit more while doing it, and you can select the packages you want to install. (But with 40GB, you might just want to install the works....LOL)

By the way, Shrike is the code name for Red Hat release 9. So you have the latest version...probably 3 CDs right? (did you run a checksum on the CDs after burning them?)

And, while installing, I HIGHLY recommend that you have the Red Hat Installation Guide handy (or at least print some of the key sections that you're unsure of). You can get the install guide at ....
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...install-guide/

TommyD · #6 June 27th, 2003, 04:15 PM

I have downloaded the files but not created CD's yet! Will the 40gig with XP already installed on it be large enough for both OS? When I add the partition for redhat will I have to reinstall XP?

Thanks for your responses

twistedcranium · #7 June 27th, 2003, 04:36 PM

No you won't need to reinstall XP....although I would back up the data just in case.

What you'll need to do is to partition that drive around the XP os. For a comfy Red Hat install you want no less than 6GB for the linux "stuff". That would be about 2 to 4 GB for the linux OS and initially installed applications, 2GB for other files, data , and extra apps you install, and a few hundred MB for a /boot directory to allow Red Hat to boot from.

Its a little bit messy setting up the partitions on the same physical drive, so take your time and read through the docs on your partitioning software and the recommendations in the Red Hat install guide. I myself have always given Linux a separate physical harddrive than windows so I had a much easier time configuring and installing.

Let us know what plan of attack (partition plan) you map out and we'll help ya out! By the way, what OS is on your 'other' drive? Do you have two versions of windows going at the moment?

twistedcranium · #8 June 27th, 2003, 04:41 PM

Also.....Red Hat is pretty darn effective with their documentation. They have a section in the install guide on setting up a dual boot system....

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...-dualboot.html

TommyD · #9 June 28th, 2003, 01:13 AM

I have a40 gig still in the box and also a WD that Dell sent me as a replacement. I was going to use the replacement drive which is working and fully loaded, but as I think about it I might jus use the new WD for redhead and still dual boot.

Tom

twistedcranium · #10 June 28th, 2003, 01:37 AM

If you can spare a whole physical drive for Linux, it would make the install process much smoother!

TommyD · #11 June 28th, 2003, 02:06 AM

That's an easy one as I have a few 40 gig drives as I said before. I hope that it will allow me to Dual Boot. If I can that is the way that I will go.

twistedcranium · #12 June 29th, 2003, 04:36 AM

You should have no problems, especially giving linux its own HD.

TommyD · #13 June 29th, 2003, 11:45 AM

Thanks Twistedcranium for all of your responses. I've been reading many of your posted links and learning a great deal. I will probably take the plunge in the next week or so. Hopefully I will retain some of what I learned and not be so ^&%$ retentive

Thanks

twistedcranium · #14 June 29th, 2003, 01:33 PM

No problem.....keep us posted. We all love to hear that we have a new fellow PENGUIN!

And if you run into any problems, just give a shout.

Dodge · #15 June 30th, 2003, 03:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by twistedcranium
No you won't need to reinstall XP....although I would back up the data just in case.

I can say this about the XP thing. I have tried to install Redhat 3 times now and it has messed up each time. Not sure why though.

But, I didn't have to reinstall. Just run the recovery console and run fixboot.... For some reason Redhat was messing with the NT bootloader for 2000 and XP. Just a bit of a pain....

But, if it does mess up xp you can do this. Run the recovery console and type fixmbr That will get XP going again with no problems. Then download Bootmagic and use it to control you boot menu.