Linux noob seeks help

[impetus]

Hey guys as most of you know I don't show my pretty face that much in this forum... I'm just a games fan, not a programmer by any means. but I'd like your sage advice.

I am considering installing Linux on one or more computers. The first, my main PC, is 1.7 ghz. I have two hard drives in it (40 GB each) so it seems the best option is to install the OS on my second drive. I want to keep Windows XP on it. The other computer is an 233 which I recently formatted and don't plan to install Windows on. Which should I install Linux on?

The next question is, what is the best free version out there? Red Hat 9 seems nice enough, but I lean more toward something I don't have to pay for, at least until I know what I want, LOL. I'm a total noob to Unix, and am taking a college Intro to Unix class.

So what are you guys' preferences? I know there are a lot of different builds out there. I do know that the closer it is to a windows style GUI, the better for me personally. Also, I am more of a "casual user" wanting to learn something new, not a programmer. Thanx!

- the imp

[toastman]

I'll send this to Off-Topic, it's not really a programming question and there are quite a few people who use Linux that don't program.

I'd advise using the 233 to run Linux on at first, that way you don't have to muck about with dual booting just yet. I'd recommend College Linux, it's pretty much Slackware with a nicer installer. http://www.linuxiso.org they have all the distros.

[|darc|]

Hey guys as most of you know I don't show my pretty face that much in this forum... I'm just a games fan, not a programmer by any means. but I'd like your sage advice.

I am considering installing Linux on one or more computers. The first, my main PC, is 1.7 ghz. I have two hard drives in it (40 GB each) so it seems the best option is to install the OS on my second drive. I want to keep Windows XP on it. The other computer is an 233 which I recently formatted and don't plan to install Windows on. Which should I install Linux on?

The next question is, what is the best free version out there? Red Hat 9 seems nice enough, but I lean more toward something I don't have to pay for, at least until I know what I want, LOL. I'm a total noob to Unix, and am taking a college Intro to Unix class.

So what are you guys' preferences? I know there are a lot of different builds out there. I do know that the closer it is to a windows style GUI, the better for me personally. Also, I am more of a "casual user" wanting to learn something new, not a programmer. Thanx!

- the imp

They're all free. The only pay ones I know off the top of my head are Xandros, Lycoris, and (in a way) SuSE.

Red Hat is free if you find the download on their site.

I personally use Gentoo Linux and if you want to learn as much as possible I'd use that as well.

I'd *never* recommend anyone use Red Hat. It sucks.

If you can't get Gentoo installed, download Knoppix and do a HDD-install.

[impetus]

Thanx for the recommendations, I would like to know why you prefer one version or another, I don't know what the differences are in the different builds (if indeed "builds" is the right term). I'm checking out your links now.

oh yeah, and which versions would be better suited to the older computer? The 233 is a memory weenie, clocking in at an astounding 64 MB.

[sixteen-bit]

Further to what darc said, if you have the bandwidth spare, and a CDR lying around, give the Knoppix Live CD a try in your 1.7GHz machine. While it won't give you a "real" feel of what Linux is like, it's nice to just try stuff out and mess about on a system that saves nothing to your HDD.
It has OpenOffice, XChat and loads more stuff to experiment with.

[|darc|]

Thanx for the recommendations, I would like to know why you prefer one version or another, I don't know what the differences are in the different builds. I'm checking out your links now.

keep it coming!

Well most Linux systems, after installation, give you basically the same thing.

Gentoo has awesome package management. As in, downloading software. When you want to install something, you open up a command line and type "emerge nameofprogram" and it will automatically download the source code for that program and compile it so it runs optimumly for your processor. You should never ever had problems because every program in Gentoo's portage tree of software is made for Gentoo...

Knoppix is based on Debian, which is close to Gentoo's packaging system. It'll download binaries though - no compiling.

The downsides of Gentoo are 1. It's hard to install 2. It takes long. If you compile all of Gentoo from scratch to a fully-functional KDE window manager system, it takes about a day.

[impetus]

The downsides of Gentoo are 1. It's hard to install 2. It takes long. If you compile all of Gentoo from scratch to a fully-functional KDE window manager system, it takes about a day.

Yeah, I remember Lucious/Bombshell putting things off for a couple days while he did the install. Thx, |darc|

[Joe999]

Hey guys as most of you know I don't show my pretty face that much in this forum... I'm just a games fan, not a programmer by any means. but I'd like your sage advice.

I am considering installing Linux on one or more computers. The first, my main PC, is 1.7 ghz. I have two hard drives in it (40 GB each) so it seems the best option is to install the OS on my second drive. I want to keep Windows XP on it. The other computer is an 233 which I recently formatted and don't plan to install Windows on. Which should I install Linux on?

The next question is, what is the best free version out there?

I think the best distro for you would be Mandrake. It does a really good job of taking a middle ground betwean what a unix person might be looking for and what someone looking for an alternitive to windows might want. The kernel's nicly compiled for some speedups, and to fix some problems someone might have with accessing CDs. They also have it set up to detect and configure new hardware on startup, and a nice set of utilities for management of them in their controll panel. What I like about them is that even with all the additional things to make it easier to use, they don't try to block you off from doing things the traditional route of command line and editing of config files if you want. It also has a nice utility to partition the hard drive for you, and I think is one of the only ones which can resize windowsXP's ntfs. I've never heard of anything going wrong there, but if you do go the route of resizing the XP partition, I'd be sure to back everything up - just to be on the safe side. If you do try mandrake, you'll also want to use http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/urpmiweb.php to get additional sources of new and updated software for it.

[impetus]

thnx guys - I'm looking at all of these recommendations.

[BlackAura]

What exactly do you want the system to do? That's the key advantage of a Linux (or any other free OS) system over Windows - you can choose how you want the system set up, what you want, how you want it set up...

Of course, if you don't know what you want, you could run into some problems. With Windows, you have no choice, so you just have to accept what Microsoft give you. That simplifies matters, but it's far from ideal.

If you want to get a feel of the system, I'd encourage you to try everything. Play with settings, change things, install different software, try alternatives for programs you already have, try setting things up differently. Even if you break the system completely, it doesn't really matter - you're using a spare computer anyway, so you can just reinstall everything if it stuffs up. When I was first seriously playing around with Linux, I broke it about six or seven times. Granted, I did it on purpose a couple of times, but it's all good for learning how a system works.

[|darc|]

Yeah, I agree with what BlackAura said. Gentoo is my personal favorite, but it may not be yours.

Download as many distros as you can and spend time in each one of them. Play with them. Install software. Do as much as you possibly can. It will give you some experience.

You might outright like it better than Windows, or you might have a disliking of it. If you do have a disliking, I'd recommend you try many different window managers.. Window managers are another GUI you can use, and they're just one part of the beauty of Linux: choice. Personally, the first time I installed Linux it was Mandrake 7 with KDE, and I loved it straight from the beginning.

[impetus]

Hey guys!

Thanks for all of your help. For the present, I'll start by installing an old build Red Hat 5.2 on the 233.

Then I think I will install RedHat 9 and/or Mandrake 9.1 on the 1.7 ghz, mainly b/c that's what's readily available at the moment. A guy in the class is burning em for me (I don't have broadband or I'd download em)

As for the class, I think I'm outta there. Get this - it's called "Intro to Unix" but it's actually for Linux users to learn shell programming. Pisses me off!!

I do plan to try Gentoo and College Linux and possibly others when I get a chance.

[bizzle]

Good luck getting your 56k modem to work with it off the bat. You most likely have a Winmodem, which don't always work so well.

[perry]

How do you do a HDD install of Knoppix ?

[neoak]

Even if you break the system completely, it doesn't really matter - you're using a spare computer anyway, so you can just reinstall everything if it stuffs up. When I was first seriously playing around with Linux, I broke it about six or seven times. Granted, I did it on purpose a couple of times, but it's all good for learning how a system works.

To post my experience... If you use LILO, don't play with it. That thing made my C: partition (long time ago, with Win95) a MBR... Needless to say... Itf deleted All the C: partition. I remember that day. I haven't tried Linux since then.

That was LILO 0.5 i think, and i was using Mandrake 7 (yeap, a long time ago...).

Use the spare computer. That way, you will not need to set up LILO or other OS loader.

[BlackAura]

I use GRUB - much better.

I have a small boot partition (64MB) which contains the files needed by GRUB, including GRUB itself, the Linux kernel, configuration files, splash screen, and all that. That partition is inaccessable from Windows, and is not mounted by default under Linux - I only mount it if I need to make modifications. That way, I can't really screw it up, because I can't access it.

After that I have a Windows partition and a couple of Linux partitions. The Windows partition has it's own bootsector, and I use GRUB (which is installed in the MBR) to chainload it, on the rare occasion I need to use it (games, or stupid university providing software only for Windows).

I can play around with it all I like, and it's very unlikely that I can make the system non-bootable. And even if I did, I have a Knoppix CD and a Gentoo CD I can use to repair it.

[userlain]

How do you do a HDD install of Knoppix ?

boot into runlevel 2 (knoppix 2)

type 'knx-hdinstall'