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

Hello Captain,
As in your wierd pc stuff thread I said I'm willing to help you if you do want to go and try Linux. I certainly am
The thread that Gosho started on the linux users page ( F56429?thread=233677 ) has some good points and some good links to info for a new starter in there.

Phil
PS isn't it time you removed the curry stain from your name

Cheers for that Phil. I need to do a bit of reading first - I don't know if I even *need* it - but I am getting cheesed off with Windows and would like an alternative. If I do go for it I'll be picking your brains for sure.

As a starter - my d: drive is empty, but formatted as NTFS - could I install Linux on that, or would I have to reformat it back to FAT32 (if you can go back - I've never tried)? I presume that it can go on d:, and there's some sort of boot facility that allows me to choose to boot into Windows on c: as normal, or Linux on the d: drive. Shouldn't presume, I suppose.

Anyhow, the Admiral is itching for the PC - gotta go

No worries mate
There are a lot of thing in life that you don't need. I'd say you can get away without Windows if you went to Linux but that's an enthusiast talking An alternative is always good especially if you know you can get it to work how you want it to.

To install Linux, your d: drive as is would be best to be reformatted to Linux partitions. It can read and write to Fat16 and Fat32 but I'n not sure how they're getting on with NTFS write (last time I looked it was experimental, do this at you own risk, stuff). The native type for linux is ext2 which does all sorts of stuff (ext3 does even mor if you want it to) so that you don't have to go through things like defragging the disks etc.

There is more than one thing that can let you choose between windows or linux at boot up. The most used is probably a thing called LILO, the LInux LOader. You can have several different operating systems booting from this. There are others (the beauty of linux, you choose what you like).

For some online references try the following
Introduction To Linux http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html
A bunch of HOW TO documents on linux at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/os.html
(They cover things from a Unix/Linux fundamentals through installation to rebuilding the kernel, including booting more than 1 os and tips for moving from windows to linux)
The stuff on http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/index.html has lots of good answers to questions (both beginner and more advanced)

Hope that helps your reading there

Nice one! I shall go and have a read. Like Captain Oates I may be some time...