No Idea Where To Start!!

[realg187]

I was reccomended ubuntu Lunix: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/GetUb...irect=download

Is it right for me?? Pls sheck my sig for system specs, will it run on my crappy computer?? ALso it boots off a CD, so does that mean I have to store files and programs on a seperate hard drive?? Also on http://home.clara.net/oldpresident/linux/frontpage.pdf in the screen shot there is a 'Lock Computer' option, if it boots from a CD then does that mean that my password is permanent or is it smart enough to store my password in my PCs bios or something????

ALso I dont have intnerent so when i download I use public PCs, with windows, is this ok, cuz I know w/ macintosh you can do that cuz downloading mac apps on a PC destorys the resorce fork, does linux use a rescource fork?????

[bigtomrodney]

Do you have a 100GB hard drive on a Pentium 1 system? How did you even get that working? Computers of that generation have an LBA limit to either 4 or 32GB as far as I know. I would recommend something a little lighter to start with if it is a P1. Maybe damnsmalllinux?
Check it out here

[realg187]

I partitioned my drive! on kde.org, it says dat it runs well on slow comuters, I may be getting a P3 soon!..... Anyways, about booting from a CD, if i do that then how do I change setting and what not? And can Linux access fat 32 drives??

http://www.kde.org/screenshots/kde350shots.php, second one in the top row!!

[bigtomrodney]

The question I had wasn't so much about partitions as much as direct Hard Drive LBA (Logical Block Addressing). Older machines are only able to address so much of a drive. Not to worry you seem to be working. Have you ever booted the machine from CD? El Torito and bootable CDs were only appearing after Pentium 1 was released - though if your hard disk is working you should be good.

KDE will run though I'm not sure how well if at all on 128MB RAM. Sorry I don't mean to be negative, but think of KDE being similar to Windows XP in terms of requirements.

Linux can usually read and write FAT32 drives. It can generally read NTFS too, and with some new projects like ntfs-3g you can even write safely to them too.

Anyways, about booting from a CD, if i do that then how do I change setting and what not?

If you can't immediately boot from CD you can try to enable it by entering your BIOS/CMOS at boot. When the computer starts and the splash screen comes up hit F2, DEL or F10 to try and get to the BIOS. You may even have an instruction on how to do it on screen. You chould be able to get to the boot order menu. This varies from system to system but just try to bring CD to a position where it will boot before the hard disk.

[eraker]

128 MB is pretty small for gnome too. I'd recommend a much lighter window manager for 128 MB.

[realg187]

I have booted from CDs in the pasy, yes.

How come I can run WinXP pro and not Linux?? I knew my PC sucked, but that much??

[eraker]

You can certainly run Linux, but you might consider going with a different Graphical User Interface. Remember that with Linux the GUI and the operating system are separate. This is not like in Windows, and there are actually benefits to this. Think about it like this, whenever you manage files by using a mouse on the screen to drag and drop or delete and copy or whatever, you're actually using a program that initiates commands (like "copy" "remove" "move" etc.) in a language that the lower levels of the OS will use. You can't see these commands because the GUI is translating them for you, in a way.

From another perspective, it's like when you drive a car. You're steering the car and looking at the speedometer and Odomoter and Tachymeter, but these are not things that actually drive the car. They are, in some senses, an interface that connects your motions (which are like commands) to the tools that actually run the car. In Windows the stuff is all connected, but with Linux everything is about customizability so these things are layered on top of one another. Thus, you can really change most aspects of any of the layers and even opt for different layers. You don't even need a steering wheel to actually drive the car (this is probably a terrible metaphor).

Because the GUI and the kernel are separate, if you ever crash a program that manages to crash the whole GUI in Linux (and I've actually only had this happen twice), you can easily kill the application running the GUI without ever having to restart the computer (which I've never had to do with Linux). This is because the kernel runs happily in most cases whether or not the GUI or some particular program is working.

This is what it means to say that you might want to think about a lightweight GUI. Most Linux distros will install whether or not you want a GUI, and most will even give you the option of selecting which GUI you want.

I honestly didn't think you could functionally run Windows XP pro on a box with 128 MB of RAM. I think Microsoft recommends at least 512 for system specs?

[Thrillhouse]

Well said, eraker. According to Microsoft, XP only requires 128 MB RAM but I've installed it on boxes with 256 and a clean install is still pretty slow. So, 512 is essentially a mandate.

[realg187]

So pick a low GUI?? Also I have a 120 GB HD and use virtual memory, so what yur saying is if one app crashes in win the entire thing crashes, but in linux it doesnt?

[eraker]

So pick a low GUI?? Also I have a 120 GB HD and use virtual memory, so what yur saying is if one app crashes in win the entire thing crashes, but in linux it doesnt?

I was recommending a GUI that doesn't require lots of memory. Or add more memory. It's pretty cheap these days.

Also, I was saying that sometimes when a program crashes in Windows it can bring the entire system down. If you've used Windows enough, you've probably had this happen. This is less likely to happen in Linux because the processes are more independent. As someone said in another thread, the GUI is a program, and if that program crashes, it probably won't bring the whole system down.