12 replies to this topic

[bland_inquisitor]

Long story short,

Tonight, the wife brings me home an early christmas present: a whip-ass laptop. It came with XP pro, but I figured I would use the new computer as my excuse to delve into the world of Linux. I love the idea of an OS that doesn't fear its users. Here's my problem. I don't know the first thing about anything *nix. I just need a nudge in the right direction about what distro to get. Frankly, I'll be happy if I can find a flavor that won't hassle me about my hardware. So, if anyone can tell me where to look to find a stable version of linux, or even to help narrow the search from the 6.02x10 to the 23rd distros out there, i would greatly appreciate it

[nick84]

Well you could try knoppix to begin with http://www.knopper.n...x/index-en.html and its install to hard drive script - you'll almost certainly have no problems with hardware.

[Bi0s]

I've got some experince with this. For beginners the best i could suggest is mandrake. It's easy to configure, the GUI looks good. and it works well. Comes with everything you need.

It's what I started out on, I've moved on to Red Hat 8 now. which I really like. they've done a much better job with it than mandrake has.
I run mandrake on my web server, and red hat linux on my dell laptop. I had no problems with hardware.

http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/

http://www.redhat.com

If you're on 56k. GOD HELP YOU. (it shouldn't be toooo bad to get the modem working)

[zerodata]

If anyone is using an internal win modem with their nix a good place to help make it work is

http://www.linmodems.org/

This site sure made my life alot easier when I wanted to get my modem running under redhat

[hacnslash]

I've tried RedHat for my first Linux distro, and quite frankly it works fine, i swithced to Slackware after that, just cause i didn't really like redhat anymore

[Ws_Ninja[CSR]]

i have a question

i have an 80 gig hd with some stuff on it (like maybe 8 gigs of stuff) can i make like a 5 gig partition on that without having to move my files? how would i go about doing that and how do i get mandrake to install on that partion when if i can. I installed mandrake on an old harddrive but i couldnt boot to it (i think lilo or whatever was fucked)

[Bi0s]

I'd start by backing up your stuff. that's always the best thing to do first. Mandrake should allow you to resize your partition that has the stuff on it. sometimes it won't. be carefull.

[Zapperlink]

Bland: I personally Prefer Redhat and the best way to go at seeing what your going to deal with is to pop in Knoppix and see how that goes. If Knoppix goes haywire then your in for a ride... if you boot up and everything is perfect then you shouldnt have any trouble moving over to redhat or Debian. Also I forgot to add that if you need any help with linux feel free to ask. Dont be afraid of even asking the simple ls -la questions.

[Zapperlink]

As far as partitioning goes I have found the perdy gui for linux more handy.. mostly because ive never really done any manually before. Kde and Gnome both have partition tools that can help you. Most important rule as mentioned before.. Make backups!

[kondor]

Keep in mind that KNOPPIX is based of of Debian, to see all the packages you get with Debian, just pop in Knoppix and get a root console up an type dselect you can see all the pretty easy packages (you cant install any).

[bland_inquisitor]

Hey Everybody,

I'm proud to say that after 3 rounds of massive ISO's, I have managed to make linux work on my laptop. My video card was not supported when i got this box, and every distro i tried went fux0r when X started. So this morning, I got Red Hat 8.0, installed it, SUCCESS!!! everything was kool and the gang. So I went to nvidia's site and dl'd the linux driver and kernel patch for my card, installed it and................FUX0R. So I reformatted and reinstalled RH8, it's working like a champ, and so I said hey, default drivers are fine by me.

Thanks again for all the advice

[dys]

Just a thought..........

When you installed the NVida drivers (via RPM or tarballs or whatever) did you change the device reference in the /etc/X11/XF86Config from nv to nvidia ???? If you don't do this then X won't be able to initialise the drivers.

dys

[JHVH-1]

Hey Everybody,

I'm proud to say that after 3 rounds of massive ISO's, I have managed to make linux work on my laptop. My video card was not supported when i got this box, and every distro i tried went fux0r when X started. So this morning, I got Red Hat 8.0, installed it, SUCCESS!!! everything was kool and the gang. So I went to nvidia's site and dl'd the linux driver and kernel patch for my card, installed it and................FUX0R. So I reformatted and reinstalled RH8, it's working like a champ, and so I said hey, default drivers are fine by me.

Thanks again for all the advice

Just a note, if you ever just want to get 2D running on a card to get it goin you can usually use the generic VESA VGA drivers. These generic drivers should work on just about any card, they just wont have acceleration (2D or 3D). Sometimes autodetection can go haywire and doing it by hand can sometimes be less trouble once you figure out what you need to do.

As for nv vs nvidia, the nv driver is the 2D driver that comes with xfree86 which will work for 2D but if you ever wanted to do anything with 3D, yes you would need nvidia instead.

While I am at it, here is a script that you can run to check your nvidia driver installation:
http://www.poiema.org/files/nvcheck.sh

This thing has made so many instances of driver misconfiguration practically painless