New to Linux. Help Needed

[CrucesMpire]

Hello

Well I have been hearing good things about linux for like about 5 years for now and might wanna jump right in there and be a part of it. Dell is also now making PC's clean ready for any linux to be installed on. The things I would like to know is about installing Suse 9.3 and if I got the right cd's which was 5 total from
http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownl...wnload-46.html
I heard I have to burn the 5 cd's as a Image which can I use Nero the latest one. I also would like to know If I can wipe clean my XP from my 80 GB harddrive and have a clean install of Suse 9.3

My Computer Specs

Dell 4700
P4 2.8 HT
512 MB Ram
80 GB Hardrive
Ati Radeon X300 Series
Creative Soundblaster 24Bit
Dell Modem which is never used
Internet is Cable and I have rourter hooked up Linksys

The reasons I am asking these things is because I plan on this weekend to Install it. If I am forgeting some other things let me know. My backup is another computer in my house. I have networked which will have all my backup apps,and music and I know I won't ever to be able to play PC games no more..

Can anyone suggest somethings or a welcome to linux hope I enjoy my stay..Whatever is fine for me..I feel lost because I'm used to how things work in Windows.

[smolloy]

Welcome to linux, and welcome to the forums!!!

My advice would not be to completely abandon windows, but rather try dual booting both windows and suse9.3 ( a very good distro by the way!) for a while. That way, if things don't work out the way you want it, you can always go back to windows (although, if you're willing to put a little effort into linux, I doubt you will!).

You have a 80GB hard drive, so I would recommend the following,
1/ Defragament the hard drive -- this is very important.

Now windows and linux cannot be happy on the same hard drive, so you have to split your present drive into lots of smaller "partitions". To do this you will need to buy something like Partition Magic, which is very simple to use. Use Partition Magic to do the following,
2/ Shrink the windows partition down to about 20GB.
3/ Restart your computer.
4/ In the free space you just made create a 10GB FAT32 partition.
5/ Following that, make the remaining free space one big logical partition.
6/ INSIDE the logical partition, make a 1GB swap partition.
7/ Make the rest an ext3 partition.

It is in this free space that you'll be installing linux.

Now download the 5 suse9.3 CDs and burn them as an iso image as you said. I think Nero can do this like you said. Make sure your computer can boot from CD, insert CD1 into the drive, and restart the computer.

The SUSE9.3 installation is very friendly (I just did it myself a few days ago) andshould be no problem. Just ask here if you need any help!!!

Good luck, and keep us posted Remember, linux is different to windows and there WILL be a bit of a learning curve associated with using it. Just don't give up!!!

[AlexK]

Actually, just to add more info to smolloy's post.

You don't really require Partition Magic to do the partitioning for you. When you launch the SuSE installer, YaST will take a look at the hard drive and make a proposition on how it thinks it should be used. Usually, it allocates 20 - 30% space for the root partition (like the C drive in windows) and another 1 gig or so for the swap partition. You don't have to do the resizing or anything, suse's automatic proposal takes care of it for you.

Also before burning the disks with nero, be sure to check the md5sum of the iso with something like fsum. An md5sum is like an integrity checker, the place where you downloaded the iso's from, will have a file ending in md5 or sha. either of these can be used with fsum to check the integrity of the iso. When burning in nero, be sure to select the "burn image" option.

And finally, good luck with the install, and don't give up.

[CrucesMpire]

Is Suse 9.3 free because a friend said It's free but if you pay you get the support with it..Is that right
I also don't wanna have windows on this machine because like I said I have another computer. Will suse help me in Formating the whole drive

[smolloy]

You don't really require Partition Magic to do the partitioning for you. When you launch the SuSE installer, YaST will take a look at the hard drive and make a proposition on how it thinks it should be used. Usually, it allocates 20 - 30% space for the root partition (like the C drive in windows) and another 1 gig or so for the swap partition. You don't have to do the resizing or anything, suse's automatic proposal takes care of it for you.

Will YAST take care of the resizing of the Windows XP NTFS partition?? Is that safe?? If so, brilliant, but I've wasted a lot of time with Partition Magic when I didn't need to!!

Yes, you can reformat the entire drive with SuSE if that's what you decide to do -- it can be done as part of the installation process.

I downloaded SuSE9.3 completely for free, and I have never paid a penny for anything. You could pay for support if you want, but (in my opinion) you don't really need it.

Let us know how you get on

[AlexK]

Will YAST take care of the resizing of the Windows XP NTFS partition?? Is that safe?? If so, brilliant, but I've wasted a lot of time with Partition Magic when I didn't need to!!

yes, yast resizes ntfs just fine. I did it on 3 of my computers without any problem. But, you must defragment the drive a few times in windows before attempting this. Also, I have helped a few people on these forums with resizing their ntfs partition during the suse install.

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2005 05:04 pm Post subject:
Is Suse 9.3 free because a friend said It's free but if you pay you get the support with it..Is that right
I also don't wanna have windows on this machine because like I said I have another computer. Will suse help me in Formating the whole drive

SuSE has two versions, 1 is a paid for version which includes some propiteary software and comes with 6 months of support from Novell. The 2nd version is the "free" version which doesn't include the propiteary software and support. However, IMHO, these forums are better support than anything you could pay for.

As for formatting the drive, it can do it, but like smolloy said, it is better you dual boot for a while incase things don't work exactly as planned.

Oh and the latest version of suse isn't 9.3, it is now at version 10.0 See this post for more info The last post contains links for SuSE 10.0 iso's.

[CrucesMpire]

I am back again and it's on Linux.The installing was a easy ..Everything went good as I would install windows. This feels so weird because the screen seems kinda large like 800X600 Res. I am using a Higher one but don't think I am getting the most out of my ati card. I installed Ubuntu since I know thats for free compared to the Suse 9.3 I planned on installing. The thing I have a problem so far is sound..I cannot play music mp3's. What audio program do I use for linux.

I would also like to know if I can use opera instead of Firefox. Whats a good thing I liked from linux at the start was that it detected new updates 55 of them and I knew I had my internet. The other thing is that My network worked..Yeah

I'll play around with this for awhile and give more info later. [/img]

[jaboua]

Look here:
http://ubuntuguide.org/

Espesially look in adding extra respiratories, and installing XMMS. Beep-media-player is also good (xmms in newer version of gtk, my favourite).

After adding respiratories and updating the package lists (apt-get update), try "apt-get install opera". If the version you get is with banner, do a "apt-get remove opera" and rather download opera from opera.com