h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Free as in speach not free as in beer

But also free as in 'Linux is the program CD-Rs were invented for'. I should be getting a distribution of a friend soon...

Richard Stallman would roll over in his grave on reading this article - if he were dead, but he's not, so he's more likely to come over and kick someone...

The GNU project did NOT set out to make an OS available to anyone regardless of financial status, it set out to protect basic freedoms that people like Stallman felt were important, such as the freedom to help out a friend by giving him some software. The fact is, getting Linux often does cost money - in phone bills (80 hours worth), or having the line hogged even if you're not paying Internet phone charges. It is not *this* freedom that is important - the freedom that is important is that which says you can copy it freely, and adapt it (and this coincidentally is what means that you can give it to a friend). There are plenty of programs you can download, though it isn't always practical, but that you are definitely NOT allowed to distribute to other people.

GNU was set up to protect freedoms, not to make things cost no money.

Yes, but one of those freedoms is that if a friend has a copy of a GNU program, you can also have a copy of that program. Assuming your friend wants to, of course.

Yes Linux is free, as in speech and not as in beer, because as we all know, beer isn't free

I am a long-time Linux user and I'm pleased to hear you're getting a distribution - which one? Of all the distributions I've tried, I've come to the conclusion that I hate Mandrake, dislike Redhat and SuSE, and love Slackware, which is why I'm on a Slackware 7 system right now.

Although I'm actually posting from a friend's Win98 system, via an OpenBSD network server which has a rather lovely cable modem

Whatever he's got

So how do you decide what distro to get? I once installed SuSe onto a 486 but couldn't figure out how to multiboot, so used a boot disk which I lost

It's all on there.... somewhere....

"In a partition a long, long way away..."

Is there anyway to get a software modem to work with Windoze? If not, I'm a little bit stuck for getting netted on Linux.

Unless you're a programming genius a software modem won't work with Linux - nobody writes drivers for them, because you can get hardware modems which don't need drivers at all.

Dual-booting is easy using the Linux boot manager called LILO. Modern distros will set it up for you during the installation process. My guide to choosing a distro is easy but probably totally wrong for anyone other than me?

If you are a novice user, consider a distribution such as Mandrake or Red Hat. Both have easy installs and pretty good documentation, with support available if you're willing to pay for it - although this is designed more for businesses I think. Both also run on an RPM system which means, if you can get software in RPM format it will be easy to install and uninstall, and the RPM system makes sure you have all the necessary libraries and things installed already. SuSE is a similar distribution also to be recommended, although sometimes the docs you really want to read are in German.

If you like getting your hands dirty, and installing things from source, I would say you're better off with Slackware or Debian, the real techy distributions. Both have a package system of a kind, but they're also more acceptable to installs from source. Basically, less clutter, although you have to do a lot more for yourself.

If you're considering Corel Linux, I have one thing to say. Don't use it. It's basically Linux made to look like Windows, and behave like Windows. Because I'm a purist, I don't like this.

Being a novice user I've used Redhat, Mandrake, and Corel distros at various times.

out of the three I found Corel to be the most unfriendly and generally slow: Go figure! (as our american friends would say)
in the end I settled with Mandrake, the moral to this story? ummm none really.

this may just be an issue with NS 4.7 but H2G2's pages seem to take too way long to load under GNU/Linux does anyone else experience this?

I can't get my Linux system to connect to the internet at all - pppd dies after dialling with the message "Line is not 8-bit clean". Since I don't have my modem manual I can't try the AT commands I think I need to use to set it up right. So I use Window$ instead. But I have found that Netscape for Linux is not as polished as Netscape for Windows - but this may change when Netscape 6 and Mozilla appear.

Strange, I have no idea what that could mean, I sometimes get the "No carrier" thing but other than that its fairly problemless, have you tried different isps? (uklinux.net *g*)

NS6 doesn't seem to be shaping up that well, I've only got preview release 1 but it has a hig memory drain (hole?) and often comes close to using 100% maybe it will run better after I upgrade my memory but thats not going to change the fact that NS6 has the sort of comercialism that Microsoft would be ashamed of

right now I seem to have made my pppd unstable by trying to set up ipmasq oh well anyone know a good ipmasq howto?

I love the way people insist on saying things like 'I've only got the first Beta release, but it still isn't perfect'. YEs, that's the point. IT's a beta!!!!

And if you don't like NEtscape's commercialisation, use Mozilla...

I didn't think preview release one was a Beta
I suppose thats a moot point anyway, all browsers see to be permanently in the Alpha stage

I shouldn't have said commercialisation, what I meant was the many buttons and features all aimed at making me surf to netscape/aol and their affiliates I think this might actually be fixable if I can find another skin for it

Interestingly, even NS6 seems to take too long to load Guide pages while being faster than IE for the rest of the web

NS6 isn't beta software - it's alpha. In quality if not in name. It's not going to be finished for quite a while yet. Things like memory leaks are just the kind of problems that preview releases are for - without them, a lot of bugs would go unnoticed and unfixed.

Mandrake is very good indeed, although I must say slackware is better.
I've just discovered two new Linux Mags on the shelves at WH Smiths.

Linux mags are popping up like toadstools after a rainstorm in the autumn (is that what makes toadstools grow?)

Mandrake crashed a lot on my system. It's supposed to be compiled for Pentium-class processors, including the K6-2, but it didn't work right on my K6-2.

My computer runs Mandrake without problems, and I have a K6-II,

maybe the problem is with something else (graphics card?)

Now running Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 ... buggy, but running. Apparently Mandrake 7 is in PC Plus #169... so...

Actually PC Plus #169 comes with Mandrake 7.1. I'm getting really irritated with PC Plus' Linux coverage lately, especially their choice of software for the cover CDs. In a review of different Linux distributions one month they totally failed to even mention the existance of Slackware, let alone review it! It's driving me nuts!
they supply most software in RPM format as if there was no other way.
But what other magazine has Windows and Linux coverage side-by-side?

Mmm I'm just trying qnx ( http://get.qnx.com ) it seems fast and has a browser which is many times better than NS,

Sadly its free as in beer not free as in speach.

It does however seem to use some GNU libraries etc