I've decided to take the plunge

[skull]

I have been thinking about trying linux again(the last time I tried was on an old 486 with redhat 5.1). What version is the easiest to use? Right now my harddrive isn't partioned. If I remember correctly the setup will partion it for you. I don't really feel like formatting right now. I don't have to do I? Last is all my hardware sported.

Celeron 566 @ 850
Abit BH6
10.2 gig maxtor HD
128MB RAM
Voodoo 3 2000
crappy 8MB AGP card(will 2 monitors work in linux?)
Sound Blaster live value
Dlink network card

and i'm on cable so the download isn't a problem.

 

[Wik]

I like Red Hat 6.2 the best. I have tried,Coral,Mandrake,Cadldera,Turbo,and Red Hat.

 

[micron]

I think the easiest version is Mandrake.

 

[skull]

Is red hat 6.2 much different from 5.1 because I have the actual CD and everything for that. I have heard mandrake a lot around here. That seems to be what a majority of people are using so...

 

[andri]

Yes, Mandrake is easy. But nothing more
RH6.2 is much newer than RH5.2 - for example, one of the major changes was introducing glibc2...

 

[skull]

I'll download mandrake tongiht and see how I like it and if I don't I will just take it off. thanks guys.

 

[skull]

I got it all setup(well where I can get in X windows and stuff). It was a breeze to setup. I remember redhat 5.2 being a lot harder but then again I didn't know as much about computers back then. Anyway is there a way to get internet setup. I have cable modem going with ICS though another win98 machine. I don't think I have the network card setup right. It shows it in hardware congfiguration though. I tried to ping the win98 machine from the linux one and it kept giving me an error. How do I find my IP address from the linux machine so I can try to ping it from the win98 one?

edit it shows up as a realtek network card. When I try to switch it to dlink it doesn't do anything it justs keeps showing up as a realtek.

 

[Rigoletto]

I tried SUSE Linux 6.4 which has a great rep in Europe, and 3gb of software.
Problem was I couldn't get my monitor configured properly for one of the windowing systems and not being familiar with the linux command line, I never got further. It just all looked like hideous DOS to me. In fact linux is even more arcane.

 

[HigherGround]

Actually Red Hat 7 came out last week (that includes the new version of the Xfree server (4.01 i believe))...we you are going to install linux i suggest getting gettinh the latest and gratest version. RH 7 sio images are available on most of their mirror sites, although traffic on those sites is fairly high.

 

[skull]

Right now I am going to try and learn mandrake, it seems to be easy enough and if I like it and get more familiar with it I will probably try different distributions.