Hello from a Linux Rookie

[DFNigro]

HI all,

My name is Dan and I am in my mid sixties. I've been in the computer service/ I.T. industry since 1963 in all kinds of capacities from operator to department head but first on IBM equipment and then on Windows.

I inherited a Sharp Actius circa 2000 with a mem max of 128MB. I've tried loading DSL and Dorian and Ubuntu UNSUCCESSFULLY but haven't given up.

My cdrom is PCMCIA and works fine for Windows 98 and 2000 installs and normall operations. When I go to load the above named Linux software it never completes and it appears that it doesn't recognize my cdrom or net card. I downloaded install disks from Dorian which includes cdrom drivers and 2 netcard driver diskettes.

I haven't tried loading from the floppies / network yet and am hopeful it will run OK. I do have a question though and I hope it is not out of place to ask it here.

I've partitioned my hard drive in half - keeping Windows (slow as all get out) and created a Linux partition. Does the Linux partition have to be the "first" partition (0)??

Hello to all and thanks. If my question is not appropriate here please point me in the correct direction.

Thanks again
Dan

[Jonathan183]

Welcome to the forums Dan,

You are better off leaving Windows as the first partition on the disk. Most Linux distros will try to create at least two partitions - / a root partition and a swap partition. Many installers by default will also create a /home partition as well.

Hard disk references are usually /dev/hda with partitions /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 etc. or /dev/sda with /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 etc.

If you are struggling with partition layouts you may want to give the Partedmagic CD a try ... its easy to use and will create/resize windows and linux partitions for you.

[i92guboj]

My cdrom is PCMCIA and works fine for Windows 98 and 2000 installs and normall operations. When I go to load the above named Linux software it never completes and it appears that it doesn't recognize my cdrom or net card. I downloaded install disks from Dorian which includes cdrom drivers and 2 netcard driver diskettes.

Hello, and welcome.

If you have problems using pcmciaa devices, maybe you need to load the correct driver. Some distros are usually better at autodetecting hardware. Also, note that dsl uses a 2.4 kernel, which is old, and might not support ALL the devices that newer 2.6 kernels support.

Besides that, if you need help identifying the correct drivers for your hardware, post the output of the "lspci" command. Most livecds should ship that tool.

I've partitioned my hard drive in half - keeping Windows (slow as all get out) and created a Linux partition. Does the Linux partition have to be the "first" partition (0)??

Linux is very smart in this respect. It doesn't care whether the partition if first, last or in the middle. It doesn't care if it's on the first hard drive or in any other. And it doesn't even care if the partition is primary, or a logical one inside an extended partition. In fact, linux doesn't even need a partition, you could format the raw device node instead of partitioning it (well, you can even format a file and use it as a loopback device on linux). Though using raw devices may confuse some programs that are not correctly programmed.