D
K
Keenan P.
Good news for those considering trying Linux - if you screw up your
machine you can just reinstall win98 and have access to critical
updates. With all the hubub here lately about Linux, I'm not sure what
to do. I'm far from a guru so compiling, etc is beyond me and I've
gotten used to the windows gui. When I go to another ng to lurk I have
no idea what DC and Blinky are going on about, which reinforces my
position that I just may be doomed to stick around with Billy Boy. Any
chance Linux will get easier for those of us 'puter disadvantaged?
--
P. Keenan - Webmaster
Web Page Design
Manitoulin Island, Canada
http://www.members.mher.org/pokokat/
(e-mail address removed)
D
DC
Keenan P wrote in said:
'Tis why I posted it. No more excuses!
FTR, I have never compiled anything. I haven't needed to. I generally
just stick with "off the shelf" rpms -- very loosely, these are programs
that just install, like an exe installer. Easy, shmeasy... }:O)
Neither do we. }%OP
You can make KDE look pretty damn close to Windows' GUI, you know. It's
more configurable than you could possibly imagine.
POKO, you are falling in to the all-too-common trap of "different means
difficult". Repeat after me: Linux is *not* Windows. Once you get
that, you're golden. And FREE, incidentally.
O
Offbreed
Yeah, but.... Most of the after market support is dropping Win98, and
that will leave you at the (snicker) "mercy" of M$ for your security.
There must be a couple hundred distrobutions (if that's the right
word) out there. The biggest problem is finding the right one for you
and the hardware you use. I doubt that part is going to get easier any
time soon, unless you can find someone to fix you up.
There's times if feel like a student in the Library of Congress.
Everything I need to study to get a PhD is in there, but (whimper)
"Where'd all those books come from?"
D
DC
Bernd Schmitt wrote in said:
Supplemental to what Bernd said (above):
Knoppix is the best, by far, but there are others, too.
http://distrowatch.ghuug.org/dwres.php?resource=cd
Add to that list MandrakeMove, and prolly quite a few others.
B
Bernd Schmitt
You do not need to compile.Keenan said:
But if you want to, can you imagine to put these lines to a DOS like prompt?
.configure
make
make install
Yes, that is all (ok, there are better ways, but this is the start).
So, you know how to use the mouse? Ok, then you can use at least one
flavor of Linux GUI and if you get familiar to it, the other flavors
will taste very good.
There is a CD you can put in your drive, boot from it, wait a few
minutes and than you can play with Linux. There are many programs
(office, multimedia, games, ...) you can use directly as well as your
hardware (scanner, usb-stick, modem, tv-card ...).
Play with it, you won't harm your pc, because you only operate in the
RAM and on your CD drive, hard discs will only be read.
The CD is called Knoppix (again there are others), you have to burn the
iso file _as_ _an_ ISO. If you need help with that, pleae ask, because
many people try to burn the iso file as a regular file on cd and that is
wrong.
Ciao,
Bernd
O
Offbreed
Bernd said:
Small addendum. Sometimes the ISO is refered to as an "image" or "disk
image". Iomega Hotburn, for example.
H
H-Man
You need to start with baby steps and work your way up. Don't think that youKeenan P. said:
can install and do whatever you want. The biggest problem Linux has right
now is the what do I do now syndrome when something doesn't work. There's a
lot of reall knowledgable people out there, stick to newsgroups and google
searches, that have literally all the answers. Learn how to get to the
information inside of linux, using the man pages. Once you have a few
successes, you'll be ready for more. Always remember, you have to try if you
ever want to learn anything. If you are not comfortable with going it on
your own, check out a night course at a local college, or join a group, if
there's one close to you. Once you get linux, you'll be amazed how
inexpensive this whole computer thing can be.
HK
B
Bob Adkins
Problem is, you don't know the questions to ask.
The best way to learn is to get a cast-off old P-II system, and install
Linux on it. After installing and configuring it, you will know the
questions to ask.
Bob
D
donutbandit
1. The dropping of support thing meant very little to begin with. The
current updates for W98 were to remain on the M$ servers until 2006. The
only thing dropping of support meant was that M$ would no longer actively
pursue updating the OS. If (as in the past) a critical flaw was found and
exploited, M$ would have patched it. In fact, the same patch that applied
to ME would almost certainly have worked with 98.
There is almost zero chance that any vulnerability will be found. If there
was anything left in 98 to be exploited, it was found long ago.
2. M$ patches are almost 100% for it's highly dodgy peripheral software
like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, and others.
Very few patches had anything to do with the Windows kernel. Removing these
programs from your computer liberates you from almost all the
vulnerabilities and exploits.
3. "Which is a pity, considering how horrid, clunky and dated they all
are."
What a misguided, almost illiterate statement. The fact is that they still
work extremely well. M$ expected the entire world to dump Win9x and jump on
the XP bandwagon: it hasn't happened. I wouldn't run Windows XP if M$ paid
me to. I rather think that M$ instead found that a large segment of their
customer base would rather dump Windows completely and run Linux - NOW you
understand why they have continued support.
R
Richard Steven Hack
One of those better ways is KConfigure, a KDE tool that does the job
for you, allows you to view the make file, etc.
Another relevant tool is CheckInstall which replaces the "make
install" part of the sequence. It watches the install, builds an rpm
package and then installs that. This allows you to uninstall the
package using the KPackage package manager (or the rpm utility) and to
keep track of dependencies more easily.
And for dependencies, use apt-rpm, which is the wonderful Debian
apt-get utility for rpm packages, which looks at your downloaded
package, determines what it needs that you don't have installed, and
goes out and gets that and installs it first. Slick. Even Windows
doesn't have anything that easy.
Of course, various software writers still manage to screw things up by
not adhering to the standard way of doing things, so sometimes you
just have to wait for someone else to build you an rpm that works.
R
Richard Steven Hack
While true, I suspect that sounds sort of "chicken-vrs-egg-ish" to
people. How do you get it installed and configured if you don't know
what to ask to get to it installed and configured?
I think the real key is to concentrate on what it is you're trying to
do and what isn't happening to make what you want to do happen.
In other words, you want to install Linux on a specific machine.
Well, you need to know what the machine is - what CPU does it have,
what hard disk does it have, what chipset is on the motherboard, what
video card does it have, etc., etc. Plenty of Windows (and some
Linux) freeware will tell you all that in a hurry just by running it.
Then you check the hardware compatibility lists for the distro you
want to install - if it has one. If not, check the general kernel
hardware compatibility lists or do a Google for the name of the
hardware and the word Linux and read what comes up - especially in
Google groups, where if someone had a problem with it - whether or not
they ever solved it - it will probably show up. If nothing shows up,
that's a good sign. If posts with problems show up and never got
resolved, that's a bad sign.
Next, replace the hardware that won't work - usually just oddball NIC
cards, or disable the integrated sound and install a Soundblaster or
something. Very unlikely you'll need to replace anything terribly
expensive - nothing like a motherboard or a hard disk or a monitor.
Most likely you won't need to replace anything right away either -
most things will work, just some side peripherals like sound may need
further configuration. The big hurdle is usually the video
card/monitor combo and getting it working with the X system. If that
is detected and works in at least vanilla VGA mode, at least you can
install and fix it to use the maximum capabilities of the card later.
Now odds are your install will go MUCH smoother because the hardware
is known and supported.
And once you're installed, just avoid changing things that tend to
affect the system (like fonts that are involved with the X system)
until you know what you're doing and start learning the system.
V
Vrodok the Troll
< chuckle >
R
REMbranded
B
Bob Adkins
Heck, I could installed a light distro of Linux in the time it took to read
your post.
Believe me, it's easier just to hack on an old box. That's the way everyone
learns quickly.
Bob
R
Richard Steven Hack
Heck, I could installed a light distro of Linux in the time it took to read
your post.
I like my explanations complete!
Not the naive newbies. They just want it to work.
In fact, I just want it to work. I just know it never does (Windows
or Linux).
B
Bob Adkins
Be patient and gain experience. You'll get there.
Bob
R
Richard Steven Hack
Nah, I've got twenty years experience with computers. I KNOW they
don't work right...
Now once I redesign and write everything from scratch myself, THEN it
will work right! Heh, heh.
B
Bob Adkins
Nah, I've got twenty years experience with computers. I KNOW they
don't work right...
Now once I redesign and write everything from scratch myself, THEN it
will work right! Heh, heh.
Bob
M
mcubed
Not to put a damper on anyone's interest in trying one or more Linux
distros, but it isn't always so simple. My monitor, for instance, is
typically listed as being compatible, but it turns out there's a gotcha
that took a *lot* of Googling and hand-wringing to sort out. Apparently,
XFree86 was not compatible with digital flat-panel monitors prior to
v4.3.0 (at least, I read that in a few places -- another problem with
scratching around Google -- especially GGroups -- for info is that you
can't always be sure that what you find is accurate). Then there's the
problem of the free "nv" driver I need for my nVidia card (also
"supported") not actually recognizing the digital connection to my
monitor. With every distro (even the "newbie friendly - NOT!" Mandrake)
I tried, when I tried to start X, my monitor immediately went into power-
saver mode, as if I'd turned off my PC. The only exception was MEPIS
Linux, which worked out-of-the-box because it supplies the non-free
nVidia driver instead of the free "nv" driver. It took a lot more
Googling to figure that out. Then still more to find out how I could
edit my config to make the "nv" driver work -- turns out two simple lines
are all that's required, although I still don't understand one of them.
I found the solution on, of all places, an OpenBSD webforum. Let that
serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who limits their Google searches for
Linux problems by including "Linux" in their search terms. Sometimes you
can find solutions from sources that deal with various UNIX-like
variants.
In short, if you get lucky, you may find that Linux installs like a
breeze and everything "just works." That was my experience with MEPIS
(at least, with regard to installing -- there were still some things not
working quite right, such as the fonts in Mozilla looking like crap),
which set-up my partitions, checked them for errors, and installed in 15
minutes flat. Add another 15 minutes for apt-get update and apt-get dist
upgrade, and I had a completely patched, up-to-date, working OS in a
half-hour, with only one reboot required. Compare that to the 40 minutes
needed to reinstall WinXP, then the 20 minutes to reinstall drivers, then
the 30 minutes to download and install SP1 and all the subsequent patches
-- about 1.5 hours with at least eight reboots, for me.
But that's only if you get lucky. Chances are at least 50/50 that
something or another won't just work, regardless of what is supposedly
"supported," and how long it takes to figure out the whats, whys, and
wheres is anyone's guess. IMO, it isn't worth beginning to explore Linux
on the PC unless you want to learn something -- about your computer,
about operating systems, about how everything works together. Otherwise,
I'd stick with Windows.
As for me, I've decided to take the slow-and-steady approach and install
Slackware Linux, which from everything I've read is among the best
distros to learn on. I'm not even going to worry about getting X working
for a while -- I plan on spending some time practicing with bash, vi, and
maybe even (gasp, choke!) emacs before I worry about a GUI.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael M. ~~ (e-mail address removed) ~~ New York City, NY USA |
| "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely |
| under conditions of absolute reality;..." --S. Jackson |
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