Those of you who might wish to venture into the Land of Linux without upsetting any Windows installed, might not be aware there are Knoppix/Linux Boot up CDs and DVDs around publicised by a Linux magazine. Obviously the DVD discs include far more free Linux software. If necessary you may need to alter your CMOS setup to ensure the system boots up if there is a CD or DVD in the drive.
I have tested two versions to work safely from the Disk without interfering with Windows XP or 98 installed, but have yet to fathom if is possible to run any other Linux software from a CD or the hard drive such as when the new Linux Liberty Basic Version 5 is released.
Of course the ideal would be a separate partition on the Hard Drive, and persuade the CMOS to boot up on this partition when required.
Gordon
Yes, Knoppix (and its many derivatives) is very nice. The only problem I have with it is that one cannot remove the CD from the drive, and I only have one optical drive in my machine. LiveCDs are very nice when it comes to upgrading, though - just burn the new version on a CD and reboot.
Actually, If you have puppy linux (or is it dsl?) You can load the entire contents of the cd onto the ram and take out the CD. (considering the CD's are 50 megs each)
If you have a relatively new bios, you can also run it of your usb flash drive, which will let you save docs aso. Pretty neat.
Speaking of damn small linux (dsl) here.
When you get a little more experienced in Linux, you'll learn that it is very common and very easy to coexist windows with Linux, you don't even need any special bios settings or whatever.
Linux comes packaged with bootloaders called LiLo (Linux Loader) and Grub, which allow you to choose which partition you'd like to boot to at startup time, and optionally, choose a default partition after X seconds.
Linux is also capable of reading from NTFS drives (though by default it's in read-only mode, but that can be modified) so you can even share your files between Linux and Windows. There are also windows programs out there to browse through reiserfs, ext2, ext3 and other Linux filesystems.
So, I'd definately recommend giving it a go. The big question is, which distro to choose....
Ultimately you'll just have to base it on experience and preference, but if you're a total beginner and want a distro that will for the most part automatically detect your junk and still give you power to like compile your own software, I'd recommend going with Mandrake 10.1 (I use Mandrake on my laptop). If you want a distro where you can really get just a barebones system going, I'd recommend Slackware (I use slack myself for my servers). If you're a hardcore coder and want to compile your own system, use Gentoo (though gentoo is a real pain in the arse to get going, i know from experience). The one thing is I would highly recommend AGAINST using Fedora Core (the successor to Red Hat personal). Fedora Core comes with loads of software, however it tends to be HIGHLY nonconformant to established development standards, making it frequently exceedingly difficult to write and compile your own programs (for christs sake they put the C preprocessor in /lib/cpp instead of /bin/cpp .... you NEVER put a binary in /lib. that right there will break thousands of ./configure scripts).
So... there's some input.
Also, once you get XFree86 going, go to your video card manufacturers website and download new drivers for it. You can get very nice, fast display drivers for linux :)
peace
- Eric / neuro
Debian is the best linux
@Drv: You can't remove the CD because it is mounted.
You can install knoppix to the hard drive though in a small partition.
Some people have got linux going on iPods, George Foreman Grillin' machines and other exotica as well
Ubuntu and Solarix are supposed to be good... I'm gonna dual boot my laptop with Ubuntu when I get the chance.
Quote:Debian is the best linux
@Drv: You can't remove the CD because it is mounted.
You can install knoppix to the hard drive though in a small partition.
Some people have got linux going on iPods, George Foreman Grillin' machines and other exotica as well
They sel those stupid things over there? :lol:
Which one is the easiest to use, for a total Newbux?
I'm dualbooting Ubuntu/XP whithout any problem whatsoever.
And for those who doesn't want to go that far, there's always the live cd...