yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

hola! okay, i have an old system that ran windows 98 and was (and is) a bitch to work with, so i just had a fun thought, if it's so useless running windows, why not run linux on it? yay! so i was going for ubuntu or xubuntu, which one should i use? and also, can i just get rid of windows 98 all together and just use linux? if so, how do i do that? okies, and i'm a newbie, so...yay for newbies!

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Go for PCLinuxOS here...

Easy transition from Windows & a great community. Better that **buntus in my opinion!

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

We where all newbies once :).

As to which Distro to use, ask 10 Linux users that question and you'll receive 10 different answers. I've been using Linux both commercially and personally for seven years and have tried a lot of distro's in that time. There's not a great deal to seperate any of them. I've no experience of PCLinuxOS but Mandrake, now Mandriva, used to be a good beginners distro and OpenSuse is also quite user friendly.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

PCLinuxOS forked from Mandrake...

Texstar who developed it used to provide unofficial packages for Mandrake.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

You can definitely chalk up a vote for Ubuntu from me. By far the best and easiest to use Linux distro I've come across.

What's the spec of the PC? If it's running Windows 98 then presumably it's quite old, and so you may find Xfce a better prospect than the "heavyweight" Gnome or KDE.

The best thing to do is -- if you've got the time and bandwidth, of course -- download a few Live CDs and see which one you like best.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Any chance of posting the specs of the PC you're intending to use, Kuragari? However, like others have said, if it's an old PC you might not get the full eye candy-ness of the latest and greatest versions of KDE and Gnome.

To answer your questions about which distro to use, I'd say try a lot of them until you find one you feel comfortable using. Ubuntu or any of the other flavours from the Ubuntu camp (Kubuntu, edubuntu, etc...) might float your boat, otherwise you might not get on with it.

One of the many great thigns about Linux, though, is that you're not restricted to how someone in some company has determined you should use the OS. If you don't get along with Ubuntu, switch to one of the others. Personally, it didn't do it for me. I do like Debian however, although ironically Ubuntu is based on Debian... go figure ;) I also liked Mandriva (although it was still called Mandrake at the time) when I was first starting out with Linux. I tried Suse which was OK, but I preferred Mandrake. At work I've been using RedHat (the home user version is called Fedora if you want to give that a try). I've also been playing around with a fairly new distro called Kanotix, which is kinda like the Knoppix LiveCD distro, but has fantastic support for hardware.

DVS is absolutely correct - 10 different Linux users will recommend 10 different distros. If bandwidth isn't an issue for you, and you've got a few spare DVDs or CDs you can use, then try one till you're happy with it.

Lastly, in terms of blatting Win98... yep, you can do that. During the installation of Linux, it will search the hard drive and find Windows is installed already. It will then ask you if you want to keep Windows and install Linux alongside, what is referred to as dual-booting, or if you are happy with just ditching Windows completely, reformatting the hard drive in the process, and only having Linux on the PC. The choice is yours, but if you're low on disk space, and you've got no use for Win98 on that PC, then I'd suggest you consider ditching Windows completely - especially if you have access to another PC in case you need to access the Web and your Linux machine isn't working correctly.

Hope that helps :)

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Can you reccomend a version of linus that comes on CD, I have ubuntu but the computer I want to use it on does not have a dvd drive fitted.

All I'm looking for is bare minimum OS that I can use for or has incorparated web server software so I can use it on my network as a test server.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

My ubunto came on cd - if you have any problems let me know and i will post you a copy of that.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

(K)Ubuntu comes on CD as well as DVD. The 6.06 ISO squeezes nicely on to a 700Mb CD.

Fedora also comes on CD (set of 4 for FC4) and might be more suitable as a web server (Install has an option to setup as a server rather than desktop).

There are probably others that come on CD, but those are the two I've tried.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Yep, most distros will be on both DVD and/or CD... I'd think there are more that are just CD than both CD & DVD, but don't quote me on that.

If you're just using it as a web server then you won't need to install the Desktop stuff, so can do a minimal install. No nice GUI and eye candy stuff but it'll be a mean machine that will be rock solid. Most if not all distros will also have Tomcat packages already, so it should just be a case of enabling it during the installation or installing it afterwards from the CD.

---------- Post added at 14:56 ---------- Previous post was at 14:31 ----------

Heh, kinda topical... just saw this article discussing Freespire 1.0, the community edition of the Linspire distro...

http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules...rticle&sid=385

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

I downloaded the iso of ubuntu 6.06 and burned it to cd but it would not boot? It did say that I could use a dvd as well during burning though. Maybe more investigation is needed.

Is there a way to copy everything over the spare HD and boot from there?

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Curious - was it bootable on any system? What did you burn it with?
Afaik you only install on boot from CD with Kubuntu, although there is a 'alternate' install CD (which might be just for install, as opposed to LiveCD).
Have you also looked at the new server version - less frilly stuff, and even a option for a standard webserver install.

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

I was wrong - just found this page which says you can install from a windows hard drive!

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

okay, well, i'm back, i burned the iso of xubuntu onto a cd using cdburner pro xp3 to burn it as an iso image, then i put it into my other computer, shut it off and turned it back on so it would start when i started the computer, well, apparently something happened, i just don't know what, a bunch of things came up on a black screen (dos) and i kept seeing the word "caldera" in it, and then it just came down to an A: prompt and i had no idea what to do and it didn't tell me what to do either, so yeah, that's why i'm stuck

oh, and the whole reason i'm destroying windows on that computer is because it just basically sucks, i can't get the drivers for my monitor to work b/c it's stupid, and basically nothing works, it won't recognize a flash drive and even though it'll connect to the internet, i can't use microsoft update or something like that b/c i can't register b/c it searches for a modem and tells me i don't have one even though i have a USB/Ethernet adapter and i can use the internet which is useless anyways because the monitor doesn't work right b/c i can't get.....blah blah blah!!! i hate windows!!! haha

ignore that last paragraph, i was just demonstrating why i hate windows and i want linux ^.^ lol, i don't want fixes for my problems with windows, i just want linux, haha, so yeah, i've decided on Xubuntu b/c it's supposedly the "lighter" of the three ubuntus, and i figure my computer could handle it the easiest, but i'm stuck on that A: prompt, so, yeah, thanks for the help again! ^.^

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Kuragari,

The standard installation should go something like what this page shows. There is some character mode loading of drivers, but it should drop you into a GUI. Admittedly I'm using kubuntu rather than xubuntu.

BTW, my laptop disk crashed last night, so I'm posting from a live CD Kubuntu session ;)

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

A long while ago I played with a CD version of Knoppix (I think). I too got a load of grief trying to start it .. after a load of messing with graphics driver I did get to a page of sorts but never managed to get to a recognisable GUI and gave up. :rolleyes:

I got a load of grief too from installing GIMP on a win9x machine which resulted in a re-install of Win. :mad:

So I'm a little sus of open source stuff atm. :erm:

(Although I do now have GIMP working successfully on my XP m/c together with OpenOffice which is superb :) )

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

Have you tried typing startx at the prompt?

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

This is what you should have seen... it's screenshots of the entire installation process.

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/sl...06+screenshots

Re: yay for linux! (newbie help)
 

i didnt see you post the spec of that machine?, ram, cd or dvd (is it bootable from the bios), hd size, usb1 or usb2 ports, gfx card installed etc.

as has already been said, you takes your choice and try it, but for an absolute beginner you cant do better than ubuntu today for beginner forums and simple copy&past tutorials on many threads , start here http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

slax is also a very good self contained package in that you can just download the apps you want to try and have them just work , you can easly make your own livecd as you wish and even create them from inside your windows OS if you so wish.
http://www.slax.org/
http://www.slax.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12744
http://www.slax.org/forum/faq.php

myslax creator for making your custom slax livecd from windows OS
http://myslax.bonsonno.org/screenshots.php

simply download the ready made modules you want from here
http://www.slax.org/modules.php
place them in the right dirs and make your livecd, burn&boot, or load into vmware or the windows compile of qemu.
http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/

great for the beginner in *nix but good with windows OS.

the other option for people that have fast windows boxs with lots of drive space and ram is installing VMWare player and grabbing any No. of ready made and runnable *nix drive images to see what suits your needs/wants.

http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/d...ols_linux.html
http://www.vmware.com/community/index.jspa

heres a vast amount of pre-made images that you can load into the player and just learn/use and play without worrying about destroying real harddrives.
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/index.html

if you intend to use the shell/cli a lot then this cribsheet might be useful
http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

http://www.suseblog.com/?p=141
"Linux Rants

[Tips, tricks, how-tos, opinions, and news regarding SUSE
July 31, 2006

The Easiest Linux Guide You’ll Ever Read - an introduction to Linux for Windows users” - a book by Scott Morris"

whatever your choice i'd advise you install 2 very useful filemanager apps , mc for the shell, and worker for the GUI.
both of these are available in ubuntu after you edit the apt-get file and uncomment the universe entrys and run
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mc
sudo apt-get install worker