Old Programer In Need Of Help

[lawrence722002]

Were to start, first I have tried several distributors (knoppix,OpenSuSE,etc) so far with no luck at getting the live cd versions to work. Have a post for opensuse about my last problems and now am reaching day 5 of reading and searching. Through my reading I have learned that altho I have not been in the computer field for quite some time I do have some skills which are useful. I'm attempting to give a background of my experience and were I would like to go so If I'm heading down the wrong path someone can tell me!

First I have been in computer for a long time all the way back to the late 70's (not to give my age up,,,lol). At that time I worked with a great deal of different computers and learned many different computer languages (COBOL,RPG,all the BASIC version's,DOS 2.0 and up) and then windows came along (win 3.1) and slowly I fell into the easy way of doing things and now am outdated so to speak. I used to write things like your autoexc files and config so you could run dos programs and window programs depending on the requirements, this includes even writing things that at that time required ram-disk because of the low memory in computers back in that time. Anyways to get to the point!

Please remember my terminology of computers is either outdated or mixed with windows so no one gets confused. Okay my first question is this, I know how to partition a hard drive weather using old commands like fdisk or others for partitioning or even programs used by windows, what i would like to do is partition a hard drive like you would of done in ms-dos then format it with system files but in Linux, this way I can learn the CLI's in's and outs and learn how to load the drivers I want etc., the catch is that I also need this to be able to have a start up screen so that like when I wrote programs back in dos/ms-dos I can have it load windows xp or Linux. Now this may have been a stupid question due to me not getting any of the distributors of Linux to work and perhaps they do that, but from what I picked up you still need the cd in the cd drive, not that this would be a problem but as I have mentioned I have not got any distributor to work, but I am not giving up Ill keep trying till all of them have been tried if need be! Any comments on this would be appreciated!

On another note, in choosing the distributors My requirements are as follows, I want to be able to program again so the ability to run what ever the current language is (think it would be C), the ability to in the long run be able to run games for my wife like Everquest 2,Starwars and a few others, also to be able to do all media formats (recording movies,burning,music,etc). The biggest thing that right now I'm going to sound like a idiot for saying is that down the road I want to be able to help the Linux community out, including learning how drivers are written and work with computers (have a basic idea), so if OpenSuSE is not the right one for me let me know and I will move on to the next.

A general note to all this is that I may be outdated so to speak, but what I have learned thru the years is that the logic is always the same only the syntax changes, altho some have more control then others!



Larry

[GNU-Fan]

Hello Larry,

i am not sure if I understand all of your questions correctly, but what I can recommend is:

a) Nearly on any GNU/Linux distributions can powerful development tools be installed, so there will be no one-way roads. The C compiler is part of the GNU compiler collection (GCC). This is only the compiler and you will need to choose one of the 1000 available text-editors or IDEs in order to work on the source files. This is a matter of preference and can only be determined by you.

b) All over the country are held meetings by GNU/Linux enthusiasts, open for all, on a regular basis. They are called "Installfests" or LUG (Linux User Group). If you can make it to such an event, by all means attend it. These people actually invite people to bring with them their computers so that they can support on installing a GNU/Linux operating system. At no cost or you can buy them a beer.

The good thing is that you will not only receive free support but also get to meet the very people who actually hack the operating system. As this is the route you want to go anyway, it can be more motivating to meet the people with similar interests in person.


If you want to find out where the next meeting takes place, just google for "ohio installfest" or something more close to your living place.

[arochester]

Were to start, first I have tried several distributors (knoppix,OpenSuSE,etc) so far with no luck at getting the live cd versions to work.

1) What have you done? What have you tried? What has happened?

2) Have you burnt the iso correctly? (Not just made a copy of the iso.) Did you check the MD5 sums? If you use the computer to look at the CD, what do you see? How many files are there? Look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

3) Have you set the BIOS to boot from the CD-Rom first?

[lawrence722002]

Arochester i used nero to burn the cd, yes i did not do nero boot, allowed it to burn the way is was supposed too. As for Bios yes did set it to boot off of the cdrom. As to md5chksum, so far on the live cd's there was a selection to check the cd, altho perhaps that is not the same as md5chksum, currently am trying to learn how to use windows to check the .iso file using a md5chksum that was recommened. Have downloaded each version of the following a few time some more then others : Ubuntu,Knoppix,OpenSuSE
remember I am trying the live verisons for now to see which one will work with my Dell dimension 2400 with 1gig ram, ati 9250 256mb PCI card (not PCI-E nor AGP, board does not support either) as for the problems Im haveing most in other post are thinking I am having a video problem, altho I have tried with each version running them in different modes from text to higher resoulation, some recommend me getting another card altho I cant. If I could tho it would have to remain ati due to the problems with this dell most video card dont work and the one that do are temermental either way, and using the onboard video cause's even more problem's being for one it is only 64mb and also thru google learned that everyone has had a problem with the on board video, no I cant get another computer either,,,lol.


As to the other post thanks for that info about metting like that, I'll say wife permitting,,lol,,,,I will defently find a way to attend some in the future and go from there so thanks a mill for that info have it written down.

Again thanks for the post's it is much appericated!!

[arochester]

My laptop (RIP) had an ATI video card and it worked fine.

Look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions . One boot option I know has worked with Ubuntu in the past, to get over a video problem, is: xforcevesa - which will Force X to start using VESA driver. Usefull for some notebooks with uncommon video interfaces.

[Freston]

Hi lawrence722002

Ehm... where to start?

First off, partitioning! You really needn't worry about fdisk on the distro's you are trying. We've come a long way since DOS and modern distro's like SuSE and Ubuntu offer the choice of letting the system do everything automagically. They detect Windows and set up a dual boot for you. Just don't forget to make backups.

If you want to, then yes you can still partition manually. The command you are looking for then is `cfdisk`, this is the member of the *fdisk series most closely resembling Windows fdisk. Of you can go oldskool and use `sfdisk`, but you need to be comfertable calculating disk size in sectors (and be very brave).

If the problem of installing any Linux distro is a graphical one, perhaps you can describe what happens in more detail?
Because I think you will want to load your graphical environment using the VESA driver. This is the general all purpose generic driver. No it supports no features whatsoever that your graphical card may offer, but it usially gets the job done good enough for giving an 2D desktop at a normal resolution. So nothing fancy, but good enough for most intends and purposes.

This might require editing config files, so you feel right at home