I am a newb with a serious problem

[oldschool]

Well I praticaly getting sick of using windows and want to switch to linux on my laptop. It has windows 98 second edition and I want to put Gentoo or Ubuntu on it. DO i have to partition my hardrive, and if so is there a way to do this without the bootup disk for windows 98. I bought this laptop second hand. I would really appreciate help.


This is my first post

oldschool

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Yes, you'll need to restructure your hard disk to setup Linux, but you won't need a Windows disk to do it.

[AlexK]

The Linux distros you have chosen all have partitioning tools on it. For gentoo, try reading the gentoo handbook before attempting an install. Otheriwse Ubuntu is a good distro for starters and the install is easy as long as you read the instructions.

In future remember this, you cannot use windows partitioining tools which MS provides to create linux partitions.

[oldschool]

thanks, so you say that the partitioning tool is in ubuntu, sry to get off forum topic. It seems that Ubuntu is easier than gentoo, so all I have to do is burn the .iso's and boot it. I try gentoo too, since it very customizable. So when I boot up in gentoo, it will partition for me?

sry for the newb questions but I am new

oldschool

[techieMoe]

thanks, so you say that the partitioning tool is in ubuntu, sry to get off forum topic. It seems that Ubuntu is easier than gentoo, so all I have to do is burn the .iso's and boot it. I try gentoo too, since it very customizable. So when I boot up in gentoo, it will partition for me?

sry for the newb questions but I am new

oldschool

No, Gentoo subscribes to the idea of "don't do anything the user can't do themselves." You learn a lot when you install it, but it's an immense amount of work to get it installed, particularly compared to the Ubuntu (or Fedora Core, SuSE, Mandriva, CentOS) installers.

[yourname3232]

Just because this is your first linux experience, I would reccommend SuSE or Fedora as your first distro, mainly because of the ease of a graphical installer. Ubuntu comes with a text bases installer and it can be confusing at times. You might also want to look into live CD distros, like knoppix, because you will be able to learn linux and if you break something while learning, it is really easy to fix.

Well, that is my 0.02.

[netdaemon862]

The ubuntu install is not hard to use at all. Most of the menus are very clear on what you need to do, etc etc. You'll just have to adapt to just using the arrow keys on your keyboard and some numbers possibly.

[chopin1810]

Yes, if you are really this new to Linux you'd really have better luck with SUSE or Mandriva, or if you want to use the socialist distro Ubuntu I guess you could do that too... either way Gentoo is way too difficult to set up for a newb. You should read several books on Linux before attempting a real install of something like Slackware or Gentoo and expecting it to go well...

[adeelahmad786]

Hi I need help as well,

I thought this would be the right thread to ask. Basically while installing gentoo I've gone as far as tryin to install the kernel. I'm following the handbook but the problem I've come across is that when i type

# USE="-doc symlink" emerge gentoo-sources

The reply I get is in red saying

!!! ARCH is not set... Are you missing the etc/make.profile symlink?
!!! Is the symlink correct? I your portrage tree complete?

As far as I'm concerned I've installed the protage from the snapshot folder and I haven't had any errors#.

By the way this is the first time I've installed any type of linux at all.

Thanks

Adeel

[gtmtnbiker98]

I would even recommend Knoppix to see whether or not you like Linux. Just because you are sick of Microsoft doesn't make you an ideal candidate for Linux.