yay for linux! (newbie help)

Kuragari · 09-08-2006, 22:04

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!

Cobbydaler · 09-08-2006, 22:35

Go for PCLinuxOS here...

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

DVS · 10-08-2006, 01:11

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.

Cobbydaler · 10-08-2006, 07:47

PCLinuxOS forked from Mandrake...

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

Tristan · 10-08-2006, 12:30

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.

Gareth · 10-08-2006, 13:18

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

handyman · 10-08-2006, 14:13

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.

dilli-theclaw · 10-08-2006, 14:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by handyman

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.

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

Aragorn · 10-08-2006, 14:21

(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.

Gareth · 10-08-2006, 14:56

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

handyman · 10-08-2006, 14:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aragorn

(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.

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?

Aragorn · 10-08-2006, 16:37

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.

Aragorn · 10-08-2006, 19:10

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

Kuragari · 10-08-2006, 23:42

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! ^.^

Aragorn · 11-08-2006, 10:03

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