linux

[bluewall21]

What is the best distro for dual boot machine with a small (40 gig) HDD and a linux newbie? preferably free!!!!!!

 

[bluewall21]

Nobody here uses linux???? Wow, tough forum

 

[Armitage]

Check the OS forum ... this question gets asked there about every other day.

 

[AnyMal]

Mandrake hands down

 

[n0cmonkey]

40GB isn't small.

 

[bdjohnson]

Redhat is easy but it is like a windows clone. Debian is fairly easy to set up but you definately need some knowledge to do it, although I don't have the slightest clue how to dual boot with debian. I have installed both and redhat was really easy to conifgure to dual boot.

 

[drag2]

Don't install Redhat 9.0, it's old. Do fedora instead. Fedora is basicly Redhat 10.0

40gigs is big, download the Fedora install CD's and when it comes time to install, do a "install everything". Then figure out how to set up Yum so that you can update and install programs automagicly over the internet.

As long as you don't have any hardware issues, (like your not using a newer ATI card, or whatnot) everything should be working well right off of the bat.

Good luck.

 

[shadowfaX]

Mandrake is reeeally easy to get going.

 

[lowpost]

Made this just for people like you

 

[joinT]

drag, what happened to your old account?

 

[bluewall21]

Thanks

I forgot about the OS forums.

What version of mandrake should I use? (for a fairly new 2.2 GHz with 512 MB RAM. and for an older 400 MHz celeron with 128 MB RAM

 

[drag]

Always use the newest version you can.

Anyways get Fedora. I would say Mandrake, but Fedora uses good package managers like Yum and Apt. Mandrake has urmpi, but it sucks.

Package managers allow you to install and update software automaticly over the internet. It makes it trivial to install new programs and it makes it simple to upgrade from different version numbers. Basicly you won't ever have to install a OS again, buy updating you can go from older to newer versions of Fedora with little trouble.

Others that do this well are Debian and Gentoo.

 

[bluewall21]

can I install another 8 gig HDD and install linux on that? How could I dual boot (or anything to that extent) with this?

Also, what kind of formatting is needed on the linux partition prior to installation?

 

[bluewall21]

anyone?

 

[yelo333]

Put in that second hard drive, make sure it's recognized by the bios, and then, when it asks during setup, pick 'hdb' as the hard drive.Also pick take over whole hard drive. the installer will take care of partitioning.
When you get to the step where you install LILO, or GRUB, (depends on distro), also make sure you pick install to MBR.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Yes, you can install it on a second hard drive just fine. In fact, most things will probably work without modification.

Don't worry about formatting, the install will help you with that.

 

[bluewall21]

Cool, I'll try to do that today. But, will it still dual boot with two HDDs, or will I have to go into the BIOS to do that?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Should work.

Backup before installing Linux though. Sometimes stuff just happens.

 

[bluewall21]

Even with two Hdds? Thats the main reason I was using them.

 

[Sid59]

if you're lazy, you can get KNOPPIX and run it from the cd drive. it's pretty cool. i was tooling with it last night. good way to get your feet wet without the worries of dual booting and such.

 

[bluewall21]

None of the Knoppix downloads work for me (?). I keep on recieving a "No input file specified." error. What am I doing wrong? (And yes, I am aware that it is probably something totally stupid and n00bish)