Linux newbie advice

Or perhaps just dual boot -> with linux as the default OS .. so when you jump up and do something while it's loading, ti goes straight to linux .. then ya just use it rather than rebooting for WinXP/vista

That's what I do too . Keep Windows for your burner's firmware upgrades only .

Just installed an old copy of Kubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06) I had lying around on an Athlon XP box. Totally painless, even did the wireless USB adapter to my surprise, without needing firmware or ndiswrapper . The only one I remember doing this before was PCLinuxOS.

Yes, linux generally works fine for older hardware.

My main PC (the one I use 99% of the time) is a X2, 512MB Ati X1600, with 3x of Sata HDD's with dual Gigabit lan & a Wireless PCI card, not to mention peripherals..

I was pleasantly surprised when Suse10.2 detected everything and worked fine straight away. I even had basic 3D acceleration using the Mesa Video drivers so i could play quake3! Yeehaw!
It even automatically detects USB card readers & CD/DVD's and automounts them
Sweet!

And Ati video card drivers .. just installed .. and worked straight away. It's nice.

I jump back into winxp every 2 weeks or so, just to remove all my emails from the server (Linux is still in testing stage, so is only downloading them, without removing them).

Hmmm ... time for Grim Fandango I think ... An OS is not a real OS, if it can't play lucasarts Monkey Island series & Grim Fandango. Might even try Starship Titanic.

WinXP can't play grim fandango without tweaks. The optical drive caching/acceleration needs to be turned off, otherwise the PC sits and loads for hours between scenes.

I'll be doing well to get the actual install at this rate
It's just taken me 3 hours to figure out how to boot from a slave DVD-ROM... (I admit to having drunk a few beers, which may have slowed the process down a bit )

I'm trying Linux as well--since I can't get a stable Vista or XP experience. Whats interesting is that Kubuntu 6.10 will not run at all, PCLinuxOS will run with video safe mode selected, and Knoppix5.1 runs right out of the box.

So far, I can install PCLinuxOS to my hard drive but I can't get Knoppix to install. So--find what works for you and learn it. Maybe learning chinese would be simpler??? /// Bobbo.

Been there, done that I just can't figure out how to get into the BIOS setup of my old Gateway PC (Athlon 850MHz). It doesn't use Esc, Del, or F1,2,3,4 to get into the setup screen. I just keep pressing lots of keys at random until it runs the setup utility. This usually involves several dozen reboots

I'm doing ok with knoppix live CD, but need to move onto an actual install... maybe this evening... I may be testing the limits of sanity by learning Linux and Chinese at the same time I'm doing slightly better at Chinese so far, mainly because of the amount of practice I'm getting

Hehehe! I am the Queen of random key pressing after this week
Off topic (totally) - Is skelton your real name? Just curious, cos it's my family name, and I very rarely meet anyone else called Skelton.

Yes it is my real name. My father came from Scotland, his parents came from Northern Ireland.

Well, I'm English / Welsh, so that pretty much covers all country options
Good to know that there are other, completely unrelated, Linux using Skeltons around LOL!

Lol you need TurboLinux a Chinese Linux distro

Note that Knoppix shouldn't be your first choice for an install to hard disk. It's designed primarily to be used as a live system. Take your pick from the many other distro's for an actual install.

Tried installing Suse yesterday... it was working ok until the installation settings screen, where it failed to correctly identify many features of the process or some devices. The partitions assigned were also not quite right - a swap partition of 211 MB being selected.
I then tried to alter some of the auto-detected settings manually - at this point the installation began initializing YaST, and then hung up at that point. I left it for half an hour, then lost patience and switched it off.

I've read that there can be problems with the YaST installer, but haven't really found any solutions yet. Any ideas?

BTW, I tried this with Windows me installed on the Pentium III, and then as a clean install on the HD - both with the same results (so I just reinstalled Windows again this morning).

Ideal would be if you didn't use the full hard disk for the Windows install, so Linux finds some free unpartitioned space. Even if you do, the Suse installer should give you an option to reclaim some space from the Win partition and make room for Linux? Linux usually makes 3 partitions (which can all be in one extended partition): root (/), home and swap. Try to stay with the default installer options as much as possible.

Hi Cressida, that's what I've been doing - my windows install is very minimal, so there's plenty of space for Linux. The installation is shrinking the Windows partition and setting up it's own swap, root and home partitions with plenty of space available - but the swap partition that it chooses as default is too small. It selects 211 MB, when my RAM is 512MB - I wanted to make a manual adjustment... but then the system hangs.
I repeated the install just using the default options (with the aim of sorting out issues later), but again when YaST initialised, the install just hung up.

Hi Prof. - Maybe the HD is too small for a larger swap partition, 1.0GB would be nice for that. You could also put your "home" directory in the root partition (i.e. don't create a separate home partition). Don't know how attached you are to the new ME install, but consider doing away with it so you have more space.

I now have Suse running on the new notebook, with a dual boot set up alongside Windows XP - all running well. (I finally decided to be brave and just go for it )
Still need to configure the internet access and test printing etc, but it's certainly enough for me to start learning more about Linux.

@ Cressida - The Pentium III system is stil proving difficult - I'm pretty sure it has enough HD to install Linux ok, and I tried it with a clean install, as well as along side Windows. I think it's something to do with the configuration of the computer, but need more experience to figure it out. That's going to have to wait until I have more time at home and can try out some different distributions - or maybe older versions.

Buy a new lappie HD The old PATA ones are now sooo cheap!

Internet access should be automatic ... your net card gets detected & associated drivers installed and generally uses DHCP anyway, so plug your cables in and away you go
Hehehee

Another Successful linux Convert

I'll versus you at tux racer

Unfortunately it didn't detect the net card automatically during install - I had the DSL connection plugged in, and the wireless on too - but no internet. I'm going to have to do that manually when I have some time.
I was playing with Linux a bit last night - I do like it a lot already... it doesn't try to hide things from you like Windows does.
/me likes that

When I rebooted after the install, I thought I was going to have problems, because Windows went through a series of check screens and wanted to be rebooted two more times. Eventually it decided that I'd installed some new hardware and ran like normal. It was kind of like "paranoid windows"... "I know something's going on behind my back, but I can't see it... but if I stare really hard in random directions, then maybe it'll go away..."

When I've figured out what the hell tux racer is, you're on

I've been watching this thread a little and thinking about trying out Linux myself but was afraid to ask. Prof. when you get time would you point this newbie or other newbies in the right direction please?

http://www.linux.org/ Watch out for the April Fool gag

http://osdir.com/LDP/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html

Congratulations on your first Linux install ! Windows just found itself on a smaller partition so got confused a bit and also found the new partitions (even if it can't access them, thanks Bill), causing the new hardware detected messages and reboots.

If you have wireless, you have a router as well? You may have to enter the router address (something like 192.168.x.x) as Standard Gateway and DNS in YaST network setup. If the laptop's wireless chip isn't set up correctly yet, you may need a package called "ndiswrapper" which can use the Windows driver under Linux (it can look for the driver on your XP partition). Search the net, as there's bound to be someone who's done it before you .

About the PIII desktop, I can't think why you would only get 211MB swap assigned if there was room to spare. Maybe there's a problem with the drive's partition table. I would wipe it completely with a tools floppy available from the mfr. website ('low-level format' or 'zero-fill' are what you want to look for). Try (K)Ubuntu on there next time, SuSE was never known for being fast on slower hardware .

Thankyou for all your help
I will need to finish getting SuSE set up like I want now - been a bit busy for the last few days.

I'll try that (some time in the future anyway... I'm going to be away for 5 weeks now ). Could be another learning project

it would be nice if this thread became a sticky...so it would be easier for others to find

Sure thing
The web sites already mentioned were my first place of information - they are a bit confusing to start with as the Linux terminology is totally different from Microsoft.
The first thing to read about (for me) was all the different distributions of Linux that are available - there are lots. Then I tried to learn a bit about the structure of Linux, as there are a lot of new conventions like "/dev/hda1" that just seemed like gibberish to start with. Most of the "how to get started with Linux" guides use these kind of conventions, and never seemed to explain what they actually were.

After I got a basic grasp of the words, I went to the local bookstore and bought a bunch of magazines on Linux - most of which had free CDs or DVDs with the distributions. This was a great source of info for me, and depending how far away your local bookstore is; a crap load easier than downloading all the distributions at home. I will be going back to get more in the future no doubt.

The next thing I found useful was to run Knoppix Linux from live CD - I tried it on all my machines and got it running on 3 out of 4. Lets you see that Linux is like and get a feel for it.

After a lot more reading, I eneded up going for SuSE linux and it is working well on my HP notebook, with 1GB RAM and AMD Turion 64 dual core processor, running Windows XP. SuSE just installed with Windows already in place, and did the hard drive partitioning with very little input from me, to give a fully working dual boot system. It took me 2 weekends and a lot of swearing to get this far (starting from a point of zero knowledge)

I haven't been successfull with older systems yet, but will be learning how to do this - and may buy one of the linux text books to work from too.

Go for it - Linux seems like fun

Thank you so much. More reading just great I'm sure i'll be swearing also.
I plan to use my laptop but wonder if it will void my warranty? I'll have to read up on that too i guess.
To follow someone new to it like us is a great help to me (i feel stupid to even ask about it) plus all the input from Debro and Cressida is great.
Sexy_Southerner do you use Linux also?
Thanks for the info Prof. and i'll try to keep up with the thread but i'm way way new to this.

Edit:
So you just burn Knoppix Linux live CD onto a CD and boot from it?
See how new i am