Newbie question

[bitbrain]

I have an old pentium 133 at home that I thought I would use to teach myself Linux. Any suggestions on which version of Linux I should use? I'm willing make it a pure Linux machine that is, reformat the drive etc.<br>
<br>
Any suggestions will be appreciated, thanks in advance.<br>

 

[AndyBo]

Here come the distro wars... ;^)<br>
<br>
IM-sometimes-not-so-HO, Caldera 2.3 has the easiest install for a newbie at the moment. Load up Win 95, pop the CD in the drive, run Lizard, answer some questions, go for a coffee and come back to a brand new Linux box <br>
<br>
Or stay sat and play the Tetris installation game while Caldera installs...<br>
<br>
Reboot, and your in Linux land.<br>
<br>
Next suggestion would be Redhat. Not as friendly to install, but better than some.<br>
<br>
Final suggestion would be SuSE. More apps than you can shake a stick at, but misses out some essential newbie information. (Like half of the on-line documentation. Tut-tut.)<br>
<br>
Hope this helps <br>

 

[Zelandakh]

I was in this boat last week. Had a bash at Red Hat downloaded from the net. Was a no show.<br>
<br>
Caldera went straight in - but it loads too quickly to get a decent score on Tetris!<br>
<br>
Best bet is to get a good book that gives the CD too - then everything works together...<br>
<br>
Zel

 

[bitbrain]

Thanks to both of you!<br>
<br>
Looks like I can get &quot;Special Edition Using Caldera OpenLinux&quot; (QUE) for less than $30. Think I'll check it out. Now, If I can just find desk space for that old PC...

 

[sijones]

I don't find RH6 that hard to install? even newbie's could handle it as long as you know your hardware,<br>
<br>
1. stick cd in drive.<br>
2. boot from it and select workstation install.<br>
3. answer all the questions and reboot.<br>
<br>
pure linux box on reboot. <p>Simon Jones<br><a href=mailto:sijones@talk21.com>sijones@talk21.com</a><br><a href=

http://www.theallandale.co.uk>The

Allandale Youth Works</a><br>The above is all my own site I look after!!!<br>
God am good!!! and good lookin

 

[Zelandakh]

I wouldn't have found RH6 hard to install if I could get past point 1 of your post!!!<br>
<br>
a. download all 500Mb of Redhat from internet.<br>
b. expand image from stuffed archive.<br>
c. burn to cd.<br>
d. put cd in drive, find that machine will not boot from any cd.<br>
1. stick cd in drive.<br>
2. cannot boot!<br>
<br>
create floppy disk from redhat cd.<br>
put redhat floppy in disk drive. boot to floppy. run installer. cannot find cd image.<br>
<br>
final point. get copy of caldera already on cd with a book you just bought. boot from that.

 

[sijones]

Good idea!<br>
<br>
did you burn the cd in the iso9660 format?<br>
<br>
What did you use to burn the cd, where you under Windows(crap)?<br>
<br>
LEt us know what software you used. <p>Simon Jones<br><a href=mailto:sijones@talk21.com>sijones@talk21.com</a><br><a href=

http://www.theallandale.co.uk>The

Allandale Youth Works</a><br>The above is all my own site I look after!!!<br>
God am good!!! and good lookin

 

[Zelandakh]

ISO9660 burned using Toast 3.5.6 on one of my G4s. Works fine on every machine (you can see the files) but will not work as a bootable image CD and will not install even from floppy.<br>
<br>
What folders and files are at root level of a redhat install CD?

 

[Huntr1]

If your intent is to 'learn Linux', one option might be to install as many LINUX distributions as you can get your hands on. Learn the 'flavors' of the distributions and their installation methods and contents. Try building the box to serve various functions, etc.

 

[sijones]

then your image wasn't burnt on the cd then? <p>Simon Jones<br><a href=mailto:sijones_uk@yahoo.com>sijones_uk@yahoo.com</a><br><a href=

http://www.theallandale.co.uk>The

Allandale Youth Works</a><br>God am good!!! and good lookin

 

[mregan]

While Caldera installs from Windows with little trouble, it can be a real hassle on a pure Linux box.<br>
<br>
SuSE has got to be the easiest distibution I have tried. Not only does it install easily, the setup tools will get your graphical user interface up and running with very little effort. Also, SuSE has by far the best documentation, both online and printed, of any of the releases. <p>Michael Regan<br><a href=mailto:mregan@bccs-ca.com>mregan@bccs-ca.com</a><br><a href=

http://www.bccs-ca.com/>Black

Cat Computer Systems</a><br>Black Cat Computer Systems build Linux servers and work<br>
stations for the small office. Our systems feature the AMD<br>
line of processors. They are an excellent balance of price,<br>
performance and reliability.<br>

 

[bitbrain]

Thanks for all your help. I bought Caldera 2.3 over the week-end & installed. Only problem I had was that I did not have enough memory (16M). The installation worked but I could not log in to Linux. Once I upgraded the memory everything worked fine! Now I can start learning

 

[AndyBo]

Congrats Bitbrain! Welcome to the club! You know where we are if you need us ;^)

 

[JavaRavyn]

I See that this thread was from over two years ago. I am at about the point that Bitbrain is now.

Has anything radically changed since then? Are the recommendations here pretty much still valid? I am going to go get one of the Linux Bible books that comes with RH and run with that for a bit, and then grab copies of Slackware, Caldera, Mandrake, and a few others to play with.

I have ZERO *nix experience, so this should be interesting!

M@

 

[tep0583]

My recommendation would to try Mandrake or Red Hat first. I have personally installed Mandrake 8 and it went smoothly, other than a nagging problem getting my NIC to talk to my Cable modem. I had it working over the weekend, switched over to another drive to try the same thing there, switched back, no internet since. That is the only real problem I have had thus far. The install process is quite streight-forward and easy. After-install configuration is not too painful. I have heard simular things about Red Hat 7.1, but have not tried it yet.

 

[Kubilus1]

Getting to play Tetris while installing Caldera is pretty cool.
Mandrake 8.1 is just as easy to install, in some ways I think the install is more polished. (For instance it allows you to go back to any point of the installation by clicking the appropriate icon on the left of the screen. Saves you if you get click happy)
Plus I think Mandrake comes with more drivers, (it even recognized my Printer!, which Caldera couldn't). Also the new 8.1 version comes wiht TONS of software, takes three whole CD's. Better hope you have a fast internet connection.
. . but that;s just my humble opinion.

I have a question though: SUSE is suposed to be good, but can you download the ISO's directly from the website, or do you have to buy a shipped product?

Okay, better get back to work fighting with installing NTWS *shudder*.(I swear if nothing else has ever made me want to slap Bill GAtes before . . . .