On Wed, 14 Nov 2001 03:21:22 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> Went there and looked at it. It looks good. The site says that it
> requires Linux kernel 2.0. I don't know which distros provide kernel
> 2.0 and I don't know which distros having this kernel would be
> suitable for the machine described. Any recommendations?
2.0.x are old versions found on distros like RedHat 5.2 and Slackware 3.5
(1998 and before).RedHat 6.1, 6.2 SuSe 6.x and Slackware 4 in example offer
kernels v. 2.2.x. They date from late 1999 and early 2000). Nowadays
kernels 2.4.x are to be found on every recent distribution like Redhat 7.1,
Suse 7.1 or Mandrake 8.0.
The trouble is not the kernel but the C library StarOffice was dynamicaly
linked with. SO 5.1 uses glibc 2.0.x while SO 5.2 wants glibc 2.1.x. AFAIK
these are fairly incompatible.
> If anyone thinks I should try to install some version of
> Linux on this machine for this person, please give me some
> advice on how to start. I have never installed Linux before.
This is how I began, knowing almost nothing about Linux. I have this
586/133 with 16 Megs of RAM and last December I bought a bigger hard disk
and partitioned only about 2/3 of it for using of DOS and Windows. I took a
CD containing Red Hat 6.1 install kit and carefully read all installation
instructions I could find there. Not very sure of what I was doing I fired
up the installation process.
N.B. All that's written below refers to the particular case of RedHat 6.1.
In the case of other Linux distributions things may be different.
At first I had to indicate some peripherals I was using. I believe the
video card also, but I am not sure. No problem with that.
At a certain moment the installation program offered to create some new
partitions on my HD. I told it to create a 90 Meg swap partition, a 20 meg
extfs2 partition mounted as /boot and a "/" partition using the rest of the
drive as I had read before. It was Ok.
Then I was asked for a root password and if I wanted to create some new
user accounts. I was also asked about the type of installation I desired.
I liked the word "Gnome" more than "KDE", so I chose "Gnome Workstation" or
something like that.
Then the contraption began to copy files for about half of an hour. And
after that it said "I am done, reboot your computer now". At that
particular moment I was scared to death.
After rebooting I was presented the words "Lilo boot:". I was convinced
that everything had been already messed up and I was in the position to
format my HD again, so I typed something randomly. To my surprise the
computer said "TAB shows a list of options". They were "dos" and "linux". I
typed "linux". I wonder why...
After a long list of `blablabla's and `[OK]'s the messages "Red Hat Linux
release 6.1 (Cartman). Kernel 2.2.12.20 on an i486" and "localhost login:"
appeared. I thought I was in luck, so I entered "root" and my password. The
command prompt appeared next, just like in DOS.
I played a little with some simple commands I knew about and the Midnight
Commander. Then I felt like I wanted to start X, but I didn't know how.
After groping a little
I typed "man X" and learned from there that "startx" does it.
After a while the screen switched to graphic mode and I found myself in the
middle of a GUI. One of the application automaticaly opened was a help
browser. I instantly started to read what was there (a pretty good starting
manual).
I learned many things, about some applications of great help if you haven't
got a clue about configuring the system.
`setup' helped me set my sound card, keyboard and mouse in the console
mode.
`Xconfigurator' is a convenient way of setting your video card and monitor
parameters for X. Also finds and probes some of those you have no idea of.
`linuxconf' configures your network with the server tasks, client tasks and
a zillion of other things.
Also, your modem can be configured with `rp3'. For instance, it told me the
correct initialization strings for my modem should be "ATZ" then "ATQ0 V1
E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 +FCLASS=0". Duh!.
And there are lots of other utilities available in Red Hat 6 for a newbie
to manage to configure anything. There is a lot of documentation. By far
the most useful are the HOWTOs to configure, then the man and info pages to
learn the rest of it.
The major disadvantage of starting up with a minidistro is not having any
of these utilities the authors of the major distributions have conceived
in the first place, for easier management of your system. (if not for
newbies to overcome the ton of configuring problems) Their name and
functions *vary* from one distribution to another, and I am sure the
newer distributions have far more sophisticated and easier to use
mechanisms for generating the required scripts and configuration files in
order to get your system up and running in no time. After that everyone
should start to tweak them manually in order to get the most of his/her
Linux system.
Hoping I wasn't too boring and didn't annoy you all with this long, long
letter.
Cristian Burneci
