jka05

Hello,

I have been interested in Linux for a long time, but have never used it. I have a sandbox computer (currently with Win9 that I'd like to install Knoppix on. It's got two small HDs (both 730MB).

I've already got a disk burned, and I've looked at install guidelines and been quite intimidated. Can somebody give me a gentle push (or shove) in the right direction on getting it installed correctly?

I'm guessing I'll have to format the HDs as step one...

genesus

with an older pc you really need to consider your system resources before choosing a distro and look at the install requirements for knoppix. It does have an installer, but you might be much happier with another distro, check out Damnsmalllinux, its under 50mb and really makes old machines fly. It is similar to knoppix being based off of debian and you can use apt as a package manager.

To install with any distro you will need to create a partition table. A basic one must include a swap partition, usually about 2x your ram however, you may need to modify it. Swap works like virtual memory in windows, it handles things when you are out of ram. The next you will need a linux partition formated to ext3--there are alternatives but this is the mainstay of most linux users--to mount /, which represents your root filesystem.

DSL, damnsmalllinux, is a livecd, so you can boot it up and open a root terminal. Run "cfdisk /dev/hda" and you can erase your current partition table. M will show you commands. You will D for delete and N for new. Then you must set the type with T, one for swap and one for linux and your root filesystem. When you are happy check with P to make sure that it looks like you want it too, and then write your new table to disk with W.

Next you have to format your patitions and make their file systems. Assuming your first partition is your swap you will "mkswap /dev/hda1", and assuming that your second partition is for your root filesystem you will "mke2fs -j /dev/hda2". Voila, you are ready to install, you may do this through either the script loaded by the live cd or at the boot prompt. Enter the key for options, should be "dsl install" or something similar to that.

Good luck, and come back here for help...

John

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jka05

Hi John,

Thanks for the detailed response. I'm afraid I'm still a bit confused. Through damnsmalllinux.org I found a download site, but am uncertain what to download.

The damnsmall index includes TedDocument-en_US.rtf, archive/, current/, firefox-i586-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz, firefox.tar.gz, firefox.tar.gz.md5.txt, mydsl/, and mydsl_testing/ files.

Current/ seemed a good place to start, but it's full of subdirs...

Maybe it's a really stupid question, but I really don't know what I'm supposed to download...

jka05

I'm really disappointed nobody has chosen to assist me.

techieMoe

You want the ISO file. Here is a direct link.

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distribu...nt/dsl-1.5.iso

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