Linux advice please.

Simon Curran

Simon Curran

2nd Black Belt
I have a question for the intelligent people of MT...
I have heard and seen a lot of recommendations for Linux, and am wondering how to go about making the switch as painlessly as possible, first part of the question is "is it freeware, and if so where can I download it?" second part is "for it to run concurrently with XP, am I going to need to make another partition on my hard drive and switch between the two?"
 
I don't know if I qualify as 'intelligent' or not ... and, I don't currently have Linux running on any of my machines ... but I guess I can be first to respond. Perhaps better responses will follow.

a) If you want it to be 'painless', do not try to run two OS's on the same machine. As I recall, the hard drive needs to be formatted to a different file structure. I'm pretty sure you could get Linux and XP running on the same box, but that is probably a 'more experienced' application, which, if you are just starting, might create some 'pain'.

b) Yes, Linux is freeware. There are sites that will allow you to download the OS. But, in reference to (a), this will not be painless. Setting up the OS on a new machine from a downloaded site will be painful, and will also require quite a bit of experience. All OS's have multiple functions that make computing an easier task (hopefully). With Linux, you need to make choices about which functions you are going to install (GUI interface, hardware controlers, etc). Without knowing, from long experience, which of these components you need or want, attempting to download and install the OS will be very painful. I suggest you go pay the $50.00 or $60.00 bucks for a Linux OS boxed version. It will be worth the money many times over. (said another way, how many weeks do you want to spend configuring a computer to save fifty bucks?)

It has been several years since I last tried to get Linux running on one of my computers. (Horror story alert) After 6 weeks work, I was not able to have a working GUI, but I was able to play a very basic 'TANK' game. I never was able to get my modem connected to the OS and, thus, dial out to the Linux support sites. I'm sure the install packages are much better now. However, I have resigned myself to being a slave to the Microsoft empire. A computer is a tool, and I just can't afford to spend that much time trying to get the tool to work.

Good Luck. ... As I said, at least this response is first. ;) , er, second.

Damn, the kid from Kentucky beat me to it.
 
there are like seemingly hundred's of versions of Linux or Linux like OS's, some free, some not free. Fedora is the lastest free dist of Linux from Redhat. It isn't bad, but I felt it to be at times unstable. I think your best bet if you have no Experience with Linux is to go with RedHat 9. www.redhat.com is good site, poke around it and its downloads and you'll find RH 9. Assuming your computer is in many ways standard it should accurately identify all your peripherials and components. I have run into problems only if the box has something weird about it. Running dual boot, we've never had any problems with that, I think when you install RH it might even ask you if you want to if it finds the Windows OS, but I can't remember for sure if RH 9 does. If you want to do it though, always make sure you install Windows first, we've run into lots of problems trying to go the other way cause Windows is annoying. I would recommend doing a quick bit of research on common install problems, especially if you have a store bought PC and not custom biuilt, just to see what might be some common problems out there and what other people did to fix them.
 
SIMONCURRAN said:
I have a question for the intelligent people of MT...
I have heard and seen a lot of recommendations for Linux, and am wondering how to go about making the switch as painlessly as possible, first part of the question is "is it freeware, and if so where can I download it?"
Click to expand...
No, it is "Free Open Source". Freeware is still copyrighted and restricted in its usage, The Licensing Linux uses gives you complete freedom to redistribute, modify, alter, whatever you like. The catch is anything you redistribute has to come with the same freedoms.

distrowatch.com Give you a list and review of all the different Distrobutions, as well as links to download them. Not all distrobutions are free though, but most are, even ones that have a price tag often still have a free download.

Personally I would reccomend Ubuntu for simplicity. It is well documented and easy to use. The most "painless" way to test it would be to get a "live cd" of it (as oppose to the install cd). It will run completely off the cd and not touch your harddrive allowing you to test run it.

The download for it is only one cd, and if you have a slow connection they will mail it to you free, they even pay the postage.

Dual booting is actually very easy. First Defrag your harddrive, then run a partititioning tool (qtparted, partition Magic, etc) to reduce the size of your windows drive.

Then when you install Your Linux Distrobution it will give you the option of installing to the unused space, it will also add a option to boot to windows on your boot menu.

second part is "for it to run concurrently with XP, am I going to need to make another partition on my hard drive and switch between the two?"
Click to expand...
Yes, and Linux will add that menu for you, so at boot up you select which OS you want to boot too. Your Linux OS is able to read the Windows partition, but the windows partition won't be able to read the Linux partition. So if you want to be able to share files both ways either store them on the windows drive, or create a shared drive that they both can use (and format with a windows files system - fat32 or NTFS)
 
I don' know if I would advise sharing files between linux and windows using NTFS format. From what I've heard it is very sketchy, although FAT32 shouldn't present any problems.

If you're uncomfortable partitioning your hard drive you could always buy a cheap one and just have two hard drives, one linux, one windows.

I currently have two hard drives an 80 gig and a 120 gig. The 80 gig is pure windows and the 120 gig is partitioned 100 for windows and 20 for linux. I've been running Fedora Core 3 and agree with Ping that it can be a bit unstable but it has a pretty friendly user interface, although a lot of people feel it's a little too bloated for a linux distro. I don't use the X server(windows type enviroment) all that much since I spend most of my time at the command line or in IDE doing development, but all in all, I think it's a nice piece of software.
 
SIMONCURRAN said:
I have a question for the intelligent people of MT...
I have heard and seen a lot of recommendations for Linux, and am wondering how to go about making the switch as painlessly as possible, first part of the question is "is it freeware, and if so where can I download it?" second part is "for it to run concurrently with XP, am I going to need to make another partition on my hard drive and switch between the two?"
Click to expand...

www.linuxiso.org usually has the latest versions of the popular distributions of linux.

If you have XP already, the linux installer of a lot of distro's will usually recognize that and prompt you to do a dual boot or format it all and go stright linux. I've done fedora and XP side by side.

Do a backup of your My Doc's first ;)
 
michaeledward said:
It has been several years since I last tried to get Linux running on one of my computers. (Horror story alert) After 6 weeks work, I was not able to have a working GUI, but I was able to play a very basic 'TANK' game. I never was able to get my modem connected to the OS and, thus, dial out to the Linux support sites. I'm sure the install packages are much better now. However, I have resigned myself to being a slave to the Microsoft empire. A computer is a tool, and I just can't afford to spend that much time trying to get the tool to work.
Click to expand...

Linux has come a LONG way in the last few years. Even the downloadable distros are relatively painless. I would recommend going with one of the "mainstream" versions. I personally use Mandrake (now called Mandriva), and am very pleased with it. There is a lot of powerful software available. It does take some getting used to, but I think it's worth it! When I installed Mandrake, I used the installer itself to format the hard drive. It worked fine, and played nice with Windows! Be sure to defrag the hard drive first though...

Good luck!
JB
 
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