My apologies for the cross-post, this cross-posting is intended to help
the initial sender in migrating the discussion to the PH Linux Newbie
list, which I believe is a more appropriate place for it than PLUG.
To Frederick Carlos: you are encouraged to join the PH Linux Newbie forum,
where discussions of this sort are more appropriate than PLUG (although
this is in no way to meant to imply that your post was off-topic). To
subscribe to the PH Linux Newbie forum, send the word "subscribe" without
quotation marks in the body of a message to
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Also, may my changing of the subject from your original one be a hint and
an example as to how a subject may be made more revealing of the details
of the message, as a subject should be.
On Tue, 8 May 2001 at 20:00, Frederick Carlos wrote:
> I'm planning to install linux over an existing win98se system but am
> not too confident what to do. I have some familiarity with linux and
> since I wanted to do this the right way I really need to ask our linux
> gurus their suggestions and recommendations.
First you will have to make space for your Linux installation. This can be
done in a number of ways. One way I can think of will be to destroy your
existing FAT32 partition, and then recreate your partition tables properly
allocating it for both operating systems. Another way will be to use FIPS
or some other FAT32 partition shrinking software. FIPS should be found
somewhere on your distribution's installation CD, and AFAIK it's an MS-DOS
application. :)
> Like I need to know how much partition will I create for linux; the
> system will be intended for personal use only and will be using a
> dialup internet connection.
This is a tough one to answer flat out, because up until now I find
planning the layout of my partitions to be a tricky job. However, a quick
look at the HOWTOs in the Linux Documentation Project's list resulted in a
HOWTO that might help you out. I, for one, think I should give this HOWTO
some time as my "layout skills" are purely from experience.
The Multi-Disk HOWTO can be read via:
<http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Multi-Disk-HOWTO.html>
Or perhaps you might have more success with something (presumably) much
shorter, the Partition mini HOWTO:
<http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/index.html>
If you want my personal opinion anyway, I'd go about it not asking what to
give Linux, but instead what to give Windows. I know I am biased, but I'd
normally scrimp on Windows in size and speed, and give the fastest drive
(or the fastest part of the drive) to Linux. Hehehe. :)
> I need to install some compiler and I want also to use the GUI
> interface that comes with linux.
Most distributions come with the GNU suite of compilers (AFAIK it's got at
least C, C++, and FOTRAN compiling capabilities). A number of people would
recommend you try out Ximian GNOME for your GUI, but I'm a freak so I
recommend Xfce. Why? Because Xfce is lean and mean. Others have even named
it the cholesterol-free desktop, and I agree with them 100%. Ximian GNOME
is cute ... but I'd really rather have something fast, and something that
allows me to customize it to suite my needs. (Xfce is pretty easy to
customize, and pretty good out-of-the-box [although it doesn't exactly
come in a box]).
> How much swap space will I need, I have a 128mb of ram and 6gb(p.
> master), 2.1gb(p. slave), 1.2gb(s. master) hd. What else do I need to
> install?
There are a lot of "rules" when it comes to swap space. I've heard a
number say 2.5 times the number of physical memory you've got, as a
general rule of thumb until you hit a certain amount of physical memory
where something else happens. But really I think you should just look at
your swap space as something to fall back on should you fill your physical
memory up, and based on this think on how much you'd need. If I were in
your shoes, I'd make a swap space in the fastest part of your hard drive
(you can do some benchmarks to be sure, but the first part of it should be
a safe bet) somewhere between 128MB to 320MB.
Looking at your hard drives again ... you might want to use the 6GB drive
for Linux (swap, programs, data), the 2.1GB drive for files you may need
to access from both Linux and Windows (it will probably have to be
formatted FAT32, though), and the 1.2GB drive for your Windows
applications (and the OS, of course).
> And lastly, what distribution will you suggest?
Debian, of course. But you'll have to understand that I love Debian
because I'm a control freak and Debian let's me do just about as much
controlling as I like. The defaults settings of most Debian packages also
follow my mentality, which basically is defaulting to secure and scringy
instead of wide open to be penetrated. I also find that while the Debian
stable tree is unfortunately slow, the testing and stable trees provide me
with a lot of bleeding edge stuff that satisfy my "blood lust".
I switched to Debian from RedHat because it seemed (and proved to be) to
be heading less in the direction of the way I view Windows. This is flame
bait, but I'll rant on anyway. I do not appreciate all the bloat that
RedHat has put on since I started out with RedHat 5.2, and when I stopped
at RedHat 6.2. The fiasco that came about when RedHat 7.0 was released
with a development version of the GNU compiler suite worsened the way I
saw the distro.
Anyway, I'm sure RedHat is a great distribution, too, in its own way.
After all I started my Linux experience out on a RedHat box. I don't know
how far I'd have gone on a Debian box (but it's hard to tell because it
didn't happen). I've heard that Mandrake may be better than RedHat, and I
know a number of experts on this list who swear by it, but I haven't tried
Mandrake out.
To be fair, I think given time, energy, and other resources, I think it
would be great for you to keep trying distributions (and operating
systems, even), until you find one that you're comfortable with and can
maybe help out in the development and maintenance of.
--> Jijo
---
Linux, MS-DOS, and Windows NT ...
... also known as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
_
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