Interested in Linux

[grey ghost]

Hi

Here is some current information on Linux.

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/filters/specialreport/0,14622,6023357,00.html

Mandrake and SuSe seem to be considered the most user friendly.

I'm going to run Mandrake 9.0 when it comes out.

Regards

[root]

Hi Gerry,
Did you see this one?
http://www.lycoris.com/ Take the tour.

Feedback from other boards has been very positive. Easy install, good hardware support and easy to use.

[grey ghost]

Hi root

Did you have to do that?

I was all set with Mandrake, now I have more decisions to make. :)

Actually what I'll do is try them both.

Regards

[David]

Hi grey ghost,

If you had your decision made for Mandrake, I would stay with that decision. Assuming that you want to stay with a product with a bit larger support network, I would recommend staying with either Red Hat, Mandrake, or Suse. I personally use Mandrake a little in order to familiarize myself with the Linux OS. It is very easy to setup and configure as are Red Hat and Suse as far as I can tell. It is interesting to hear that version 9 of Mandrake is being released. I hope that support for Wireless PCI network cards has been added. If so, I will be using Linux a little more in the future. :)

Talk to you later Gerry. Have a good evening. :)

[grey ghost]

Hi David

Thanks for the input.

This has been added for wireless.

"pcmcia-cs-3.2.0-2mdk
- fixed compilation (P302)
- add P301 to configure Advantech wireless cards
- remove P4 and P104 as we don't have kudzu anymore"


I did a little research and Lycoris seems to be a little rough around the edges. :)

Maybe when it has been out a little longer and had a shake out with a lot of users it will prove to be viable.

I have put a P3 600 with 512 pc133 aside. Will dual boot with 98se.

I'll go with Mandrake 9.0 for now. Being new to Linux it seems to be considered one of the easier distro's for new users.


Hey root! Try Desktop/LX and we along with David can swap war stories about our experiences.

Regards

[Lithp]

My questions are : is it free? How do install it?

[MegaHertz]

Originally posted by Lithp
My questions are : is it free? How do install it?
1) Some linux distro's are free and some are not. Lycoris Desktop/LX is not free but the charge is minimal ($30 USD I think). Mandrake's is free to download. I am downloading v9.0 rc 2 right now and will probably give it a go some time this week.
2) I have never installed before so I cannot say for sure how, but from what I have heard it is different for just about every distro. Sorry that i cannot be of more help than that perhaps one of our linux savy members will be able to tell us for sure.

[MegaHertz]

Lithp,

Here is the install text from CD1 of Mandrake 9.0 sounds easy enough. Says you can even install it onto your windows partition in a subfolder just to try it out. Personally I am going to make an image first. Then I'll probably use a program like OS Selector or System Commander to install the new OS.

[grey ghost]

Hi Megahertz

Thanks for the information.

I dual boot with 98se on one drive and XPpro on the other.

I think I'll put Mandrake 9 on the 98se disk. Even if it is slower than a clean install. I'm in the learning mode so the speed won't matter right now.:)

Regards

[root]

How big is the Mandrake 9 download if you do it that way? Where do you get it?
In the download instructions, I saw no mention of a dual boot setup. What the deal with dual booting?

[David]

Hi root,

The last time that I looked, the downloads were about 500 - 1000 Megs in size. These can be smaller or larger however depending on the distribution.

Where to get it:
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3

Once you get to that link, scroll to the bottom of the page and select:
........"send me to the download page now."

Dual booting can be accomplished with LILO or a third party multi-boot handler as MegaHertz Suggested. Personally, I use Boot Magic from Powerquest and have been very happy with that. But, my step-father uses LILO and that also works great. It is not difficult to set up.

You can download the entire Mandrake Linux manual from their website if you like. The information there is much more detailed. I did about six months of reading before installing my first Linux OS. While most current distributions are close to the ease of a Windows installation, there are many options that may enhance the security or stability of your system and I recommend a lot or reading and a hardware NAT firewall, especially for beginners.

I can provide links to FREE online self learning courses that start a person from the command line and works them all of the way through the basic linux GUI. Let me know.

Talk to you later. :)

[MegaHertz]

David

I for one would be very grateful if you could provide those links. I am very close to installing Mandrake 9 and would like to do some more reading before I make the final plunge. Fortuneately i have several friends that are regular users of linux to help me out if things get to desperate :).

Root

I think the download for v9.0 was around 1.8 Gig for all three CDs. For v8.2 it is approximately 1.3 Gig for two CDs. If you would like copies of the CD's let me know and I would be happy to send them to you. I can send either version.

[grey ghost]

Hi

You need to download the 3 iso files and then burn them to disks.

I'm going to install to my secondary boot disk that has fat 32 98se.

Look at the bottom of the download page for more install info.



There are two or three ISO9660 images files for Mandrake Linux (depending on version) available in the "iso/" directory. You can use such files for easy CD-burning (under Windows, you can use Easy CD Pro or Easy CD Creator, check our notice here). Each ISO9660 file is around 650 MB. Only the first CD (install) is needed, the others are recommended.
If you don't use the ISO image, you must at least download the "Mandrake/" and "images/" trees from the standard archive. It's around 1 Gig.
It's always a good idea to have a look at the online or printable documentation.

Regards

[David]

Hi,

Here are some of the links that I found useful. But, I recommend downloading and reading all documentation for your distribution also. In addition Mandrake and other distribution providers offer forums, support services, and even e-training geared toward their distributions. Find those services and use them as it will accelerate your progress and make the whole experience with Linux a lot more enjoyable.

For Training:

http://www.linux.org/lessons/ Good basic linux from command line up.

http://www.basiclinux.net/ Bit more extensive than first one. Requires time commitment.

General:

http://www.tldp.org/ I learned a LOT here.

http://www.distrowatch.com/ Good distribution comparison page.

Popular Linux Distributions:

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ Mandrake

http://www.redhat.com Redhat

http://www.suse.com/index_us.html Suse

http://www.debian.org/ Debian

http://www.slackware.org Slackware

Other links of interest:

http://www.gnome.org OS GUI for linux, other good apps also. Check out Evolution.

http://www.kde.org OS GUI for linux, other good apps also.

http://www.gnomemeeting.org/ AV type IM application.

http://www.freezer-burn.org/ General Linux Info

http://www.xfree86.org X-Window component of Linux distributions

http://freshmeat.net/ Many handy Linux files and apps found here

http://slashdot.org a regular hangout of linux and open source advocates.

Have fun with these links. I hope that some of the links that I have posted are new to some of you. Happy reading. :)

[grey ghost]

Thanks David

Most of those links are new to me.

Well looks like I'm going back to school.:)

Regards

[root]

Thanks everyone for the input and the offers.
My God what happened to Linux. When it first came out it was small enough to fit on a floppy I think. Now its 3 CDs. I guess the same things happening to Opera. Oh well.
I'm going to hold off for a little while yet on Linux. I'm hoping I don't really have to do it.:rolleyes:

[David]

Hi Gerry,

I used to have a lot more links. I did some looking around today and it looks like many of the sites that I used to visit just one year ago are gone. But, the links that I gave here are some of the best that I have found. So, at least they are still there.

You made a note concerning my problem with wireless configuration above. I have found a site that specializes in wireless card drivers and Linux. But, their main focus is PCMCIA drivers. Although my card is a PCMCIA card, it is routed through something called a PLX chip and so it appears to the system to be a regular PCI card. I know that sounds strange, but it is very difficult to get PCI wireless cards like mine to work in Linux. I have and SMC2602W card and here is the site that I used for help.

http://www.linux-wlan.org/

I will work with Linux more seriously when the distribution providers start improving their drivers. In my opinion, that is the biggest deficiency of Linux at this point and the most dominant reason why they pose no serious threat to Microsoft. Their GUIs are really just fine and will improve as more commerical and research dollars are pumped into Linux. If the Linux camp ever improves the quality and selection of hardware drivers to then Microsoft and Apple better look out.

root, to some extent, Linux distributions today are like Microsoft OS installations. The basic components to boot a linux system are VERY small. There are just many tools and applications, including the GUI, that are bundled with Linux today. That is what makes the distributions so large. The nice thing is that you only have to install what you need and you can get the source code if you ever want to look into how an application is working. By the way, some of that extra space with the linux distribution is used for source code also. So todays Linux distributions can get bloated, but at least it remains modular and installation of components is optional. :)

[David]

Hey,

I used to have a lot of office alternatives for both Linux and Microsoft Operating systems. I finally found a site which I will not name here that gives a nice list of office alternatives. Here are the sites:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.0/index.html About $76.00, but Sun has done a lot of work to ensure smooth import and export of Microsoft files. Linux version available.

http://www.openoffice.org/ FREE open source alternative to StarOffice. OpenOffice is kind of like the open source version of Star Office. Linux version available.

http://www.abisource.com/ Popular and FREE Word Processer called AbiWord. Linux version available.

http://www.koffice.org/ Office Productivity Suite for Linux.

http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/ Office Productivity Suite for Linux.

http://www.gobe.com/ GoBe Productive Office Suite for Windows and BeOS. Includes a variety of productivity applications. Price is about $75.00 US.

http://www.software602.com/ The 602 Pro Office Suite. Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Photo Editor, and Photo Album. No Linux Version available.

http://www.ability.com/ Ability office including a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Database, and image editing software. Retail is about $70.00 No linux version is available.

http://www.apple.com/appleworks/ Apple Works 6,2 for Windows. Tools for word processing, page layout, painting, spreadsheet, database, and presentations. Not sure if linux copy is available. I do not think so.

http://www.e-press.com/ Easy Office with about 18 different procuctivity applications. No linux version available. $40.00 US for a premium version. Looks interesting.

http://www.lotus.com/products/smrtsuite.nsf/wPages/smartsuite?OpenDocument Lotus Smart Suite. Unknown to me if linux version exists.

http://www.ragtime-online.com/ Rag Time Solo. Office Suite with FREE downloads for Mac and Windows OS.

http://www.thinkfree.com/ ThinkFree Office. Includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and file management tool.

http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=Corel/Landing Corel Word Perfect Office. A competitively priced alternative to MS office.

That is all that I can find or think of for now. I hope that you find these links useful. If you use one of these alternative applciations in Windows or Linux, please let us know how you like them. :)

[David]

Another good idea to help accelerate your progress and eduction with Linux is joining a LUG, a Linux User's Group in your area. It will help put you in direct contact with other Linux enthusiasts in your area that can help you get started and help you secure your box. Here are a couple of links that may help you find some.

http://www.linux.org/groups/

http://www.ssc.com:8080/glue/

http://www.google.com/ If the first two links are not helpful, use Google and search for LUGs (Linux User Groups) in your area.

Good Luck. :)

[grey ghost]

Hi

I came across this link and immediately said thats for me. :)

http://www.linuxnewbie.org.

regards

[David]

Hi Gerry,

That is a pretty good one. It even has a link to a forum like this one. Well, maybe not completely the same. :)

[Lithp]

OK so I have to burn to cd and then install from there. Why are the other two only recommended?

[MegaHertz]

I believe they contain additional software. Now if only Agnitum would make a Linux version of Outpost my decision would be that much easier. :D

[Lithp]

Bah,
I tried to install using floppy but mandrake said my newly burned disk was not a mandrake install disk!!! :(

[grey ghost]

Originally posted by Lithp
Bah,
I tried to install using floppy but mandrake said my newly burned disk was not a mandrake install disk!!! :(

I just downloaded and burnt the first disk. CD1

If I'm running widows and put the disk in the mandrake window opens with selections. Install, help, boot from floppy etc.

If I leave the disk in and reboot the mandrake window appears and asks if I want to install.

Did you burn the first disk? That's all you need.

If you have your bios set to boot from CD-ROM first then" A:" or "C:" you should be okay to install from the CD.

If not make a boot floppy and install from DOS or windows and you won't need the CD.

Regards

[grey ghost]

Hi

The Mandrake forums are saying that the final version of 9.0 will be out this week.

You may want to wait for it.:)

Regards

[MegaHertz]

Cool thanks for the heads up!

[Lithp]

HI,
I just downloaded disk one- not the other three. I did not mess with my bios settings. Mandrake detected the two cd drives on my system but it said my cd was not an installation cd. I am pretty sure it was though. Perhaps it was a bad burn to the disk. I dunno- Any other suggestions?

[MegaHertz]

Lithp,

Maybe try a different download site. But if what grey ghost said is true you might just want to wait till the final version comes out. I will starting an install with mine this evening when I get home and see if it works.

[MegaHertz]

Hi all,

Just found this while browsing the SuSE site and it seemed like kind of a neat deal to try just for fun. Think I'll give it a whirl tonight.

SuSE Linux for i386 Live-Eval
SuSE makes the live-eval version of SuSE Linux available for download as an ISO image. This version runs entirely from the bootable CD and is not installed on the hard disk.

If you want to get to know SuSE Linux or test if your hardware is fully supported, the live-eval version is the right choice for you.

The ISO image is located in the respective directory under ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/

[MegaHertz]

Well I tried the Liveval version of SuSE 8.0 and all I can say is WOW! I am definitely going to play with it some more before I decide what I want to do for sure but it is definitely worth the download. It will need approximately 100 Meg of HD space to store driver and config info but other wise it runs from the CD.

Edit:
Lithp,

I stuck my CD1 of Mandrake in the drive and rebooted and it went straight into the setup menu. I guess maybe you're right about a bad burn. Or it could be a corrupt iso image.

[grey ghost]

Hi

I just ran the Suse live version and MegaHertz is right.

For the people who want to get a taste of Linux with out the hassle of a full install this is the way to go.:)

Regards

[MegaHertz]

Grey Ghost

Glad you liked it! I was surprised at just how easy it was to get accustomed to look and feel of it. For anyone trying to decide about linux; if you consider yourself to be knowledgeable with a PC at all you should have no trouble figuring things out. Although if you have a newer setup it maybe kind of hard to get drivers for some of your unique devices.