linux questions.

[Colt45]

Hi, I have a BX board with one celeron 400 (soon to be dual) with 192mb ram.
on my main 13gb HDD i have win2k + apps.
i also have a second 2gb SCSI HDD, and have been thinking about trying linux..
what flavor of linux would be good for this application?

also what file system does linux use? will it work with FAT32, or just FAT16, or is there a linux file system?

is it difficult to install?

thanks for any input.

mark

 

[n0cmonkey]

Any distro should be fine, but to get a better idea of what I would recommend (beyond the obvious) I would have no know what your plans will be for it.



<< also what file system does linux use? >>



ext2fs, ext3fs, ReiserFS, XFS are the mroe commonly used file systems. I use ext2fs, but I dont recommend it. XFS or ext3fs would be my first choice ifI wasnt so lazy.



<< will it work with FAT32, or just FAT16, or is there a linux file system? >>



It can read and write to FAT32 partitions, but FAT32 sucks and shouldnt be used for anything really (unless you are dualbooting with DOS which you are not).



<< is it difficult to install? >>



Difficult is a relative term. I think OpenBSD, Slackware, Debian and FreeBSD have the easiest installs of *ANY* OS. OpenBSD being the easiest for me, and Ive installed Windows more times in 1 day than I have had to install OpenBSD in the past 2 years or so.

 

[BlackOmen]

>>ext2fs, ext3fs, ReiserFS, XFS are the mroe commonly used file systems. I use ext2fs, but I dont recommend it. XFS or ext3fs would be my first choice ifI wasnt so lazy.

More importantly, ext2 is the de facto standard linux fs, it will most likely be the default fs. ext3 is being found more and more in newer distros and adds journaling to ext2. xfs, reiserfs, jfs can be implemented if it is not an option when you install. ext2 will suffice (the only drawback is that if you crash and reboot, you will have to wait for fs check to complete).

FAT32 dos not support file links or permissions, which is necessarly for any *nix.