Space needed on laptop 1

[perrymans]

I have a Dell Inspiron 4100 with Win 2K, but only a 10GB hard drive. How much room would I need for installing an easy-to-use-for-learning linux? I imagine it would be Red Hat since it is one the easiest (and most supported) for Windows converts. I don't think I am ready for Slackware or Debian.

I want to be able to get up and running with the greatest of ease.

Thanks. Sean.

 

[franklin97355]

You should be fine if most of the 10gig is free. there are several distros that will run from a CD if you want to try Linux out first.

http://cheapbytes.com

 

[sethanon31a]

Hi there!

How much space to alloocate? It really depends on how much you wish to install. A "comprehensive" Linux install with a fair smattering of programs and utilities will happily sit in 5 Gb whilst a very basic install, with enough to manage files, play DVD's and browse the web can fit in well under one Gb - these figures are for Mandrake 9 - the distro with which I'm most familiar... As another post suggested, you can run Linux from a CD - assuming that your machine has a CDROM that allows one to boot from it - check out your BIOS and see what it says! A good one to play with is SuSe 8 Eval which has a downloadable iso file that you can burn and make a "try it and see" disk from.

One disadvantage of this process is that you have much less flexibility in your set-up and boot options - if it cannot auto discover your hardware ok it's a real problem sorting matters out, much less so if you undertake a "real" install on a separate partition. The SuSe trial disk does not require you to repartition at all, in fact mine ran ok saving its config files on my Windows XP NTFS volume...