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

*checks that the 'The Doctor Is In' sign is up, passes over his 5p*
Hi Dr. John,
Right. I would like to put linux on my current box, already running W98,O2000 etc. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff.
Preferably I would like a dual boot system, thus allowing me to teach myself Linux. I want to learn some form of Unix and this appears to be the best way to go about it.
The stats I have are as follows:
PIII/450MHz. 17.2Gb HDD, 128Mb RAM, ATI Rage 128 32Mb graphics,
SB Live! Value soundcard with Cambridge 4 point speaker & subwoofer.
56k v.90 modem, CD-RW. 17" Monitor (probably more than you need to know). I do have another box, on loan to my mother, which does have 2 HDD. I could probably pilfer my second HDD back, if needs be. It is a 4.3Gb HDD, but if I can get away with it, I would prefer not to have to canibalise the other PC for the moment.
Any input much appreciated.
Thank you in anticipation
B-17

Whoops! I appear to have stumbled into a foreign language service by mistake. Just wondering if the doc was at home to visitors.

It all sounds ok. The only problems I can forsee with your hardware are the soundcard and maybe the modem. The soundcard does have drivers, but they aren't integrated with the kernel yet and as long as you've got a hardware (ie not most winmodems) then you should be able to get it to work as well. The other bits should be fine. I have had linux up and going in about 500M, but it does like it if you can give it more space. The idea of putting it onto a second drive is good (if you have a spare drive) as it means that you don't need to mess with the partitions on your main drive. Any other queries then drop by and I'll try and help get an answer.

Phil (who doesn't generally use MS products any more - FreeBSD and Linux, software as it should be)

Boys and their toys eh!
*swims away singing*
The leg bone's connected to the.....

At a quick glance you should have no probs with a dual boot system. I'm going to check a few compatabilities etc, etc but it looks like you can run whatever you like.
If you are a real newbie, SuSE v 6.4 has YaST2 bundled with it which will take all the pain out of configuring your system.

BTW I assume you have the facilities to do a complete data back-up.

Dr J

Apart from the main software like win98 etc, I have just started using my CD-RW to hive off all other data. At 700Mb a CD it's not bad. How will the CD-RW work under Linux? Would I be able to use it as a storage device as in Win98?
Yes I am as green as they come when it comes to Linux. Can I get SuSE v 6.4 online? I have Mandrake 7 on CD, which would be better?

All help gratefully recieved.

You should be able to get the cdrw working, but get the basic system up and running first. Don't try and do everything at once.

Suse, Mandrake they both seem pretty much of a muchness to me. A friend of mine thinks highly of Mandrake (which if you've already got then you might as well give it a try).

If you're as green as you say, take some time to check out the Hardware HOWTO and the Installation HOWTO, which are both part of the Linux Documentation Project (LDP). A UK mirror of the LDP can be found at http://www.man.ac.uk/LinuxDoc/ the HOWTO documents (and mini howtos) can be found in plain text, HTML, postscript and pdf formats. They also have some books avaliable as HTML and other formats, follow the link to guides and check out Matt Welsh's Installation and Getting Started. That should give you a few things to think about before actually doing anything drastic with your system.

I'm back.
The reason i recommended SuSE v 6.4 (available with manual and 6 CDs at only £29.99) is that it has YaST2 packaged with it. It makes things a lot easier for the newbie. Read the SuSE pages at [Broken link removed by Moderator]

Meanwhile - Thanks Phil for the input. Any thoughts about setting up a network of H2G2 Linux users?

Thanks to both of you, Phil and Dr. John, the input is much appreciated.
I will check out the links and try and get my system set up.
Will let you both know here how I get on.

Things like YaST sometimes put me off, I like to know what's going on properly under the hood and having to use yast means you're sheilded from these things. Ok so perhaps it's a good thing for a new user but it pays to find out what's going on at a lower level. As when it all goes horribly wrong, you might have some chance of getting yourself back.

As for a Linux user group I've thought about it, and decided no I'm not doing that. I want to do a similar thing, a *nix users group. Inclusiveness is what we want, as people out there use other *nixs and their input is just as valid I think. Been meaning to write a page for a while, just not got round to it.

OK. Point taken, Phil. Still worth thinking about tho?

Dr J

I would certainly become a member, if only to get more help like this!

Don't worry, it's on the things to do list

I'd like to invite you all over to H2G2U2, the H2G2 unix users page, http://www.h2g2.com/A369678 There isn't much up there yet, a few people have stopped by and said I use unix and there are a couple of h2g2 search engines. I hope to be adding some more stuff over time, but still for now, come on over