Posted on 11/18/2010 3:53:34 PM PST by West Texas Chuck
Have you tried a bootable CD, like Knoppix? Tons of free ditros out there, and it’s a great way to get a feel for the OS without having to start your experience trying to make hardware work.
Linux Ping
(My wife keeps all my dirty pictures. In a lockbox.)
You mention that you have an old version of Redhat. The first step would be to get a current version of Fedora (or Ubuntu or other current distribution) and try that.
New device drivers get added all the time, and in general the newer the distribution, the more likely it will support your hardware.
Linux Mint was as easy an install I have ever done.
I am still a newbie and have had no problems.
I had a lot of trouble with and older toshiba and older redhat and linux for wireless - it was fussy about driver and the hardware. It didn't like a linksys pcmcia, but was ok with a Lucent card.
I had no trouble with the recent Ubuntu and a new HP.
Not yet, I’ve been working with a copy of Red Hat that is bootable (came with my Linux for Dummies) but it is so old and out of date that I gave up. I’m wondering if I might need to flash the BIOS to a newer version or something.
Did anyone see the $99 Netbook at CVS??
I have a 13 year old neice and this thing might be a good birthday gift for her. They run Windows CE which is bad but they can open Word and PDF files and play Youtube videos (not in HD of course) and it has a webcam and mic.
So it can do all the basics. Definitely wouldn’t give this kid a more expensive computer. heh.
I am a newbie myself. I have a couple of bootable linux CD’s already burned. One of them is tiny ol’ PuppyLinux.
By the way, the default boot setup for the latest linux is to setup a dual boot environment, so both systems would be available.
Yah, I may just have to get a newer box. The Ubuntu I tried was, I forget the version, downloaded it last spring and put it on a DVD.
This is a Dimension 4400, probably 6-8 years old, might be a waste of time.
Might try suse, its free and dead easy
Basically insert cd and click ok a few times
Learning the nomenclature of Linux will take a long time. If you started on 'puting with DOS like I did you have to learn a whole new language and you keep comparing the Linux command with something in Windows/DOS to try to understand what you're doing.
Cabled to the router.
I’m a ways away from the router, but I guess I could always run some Cat5 cable out here in the Dawg House if need be. I’m pulling Ubuntu 10.10 so I can burn it to a DVD and try to set up a dual booter setup.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do ;)
It is a free application. It will let you run virtual machines on your windows computer. You can find "appliances" or virtual machines of all different flavors of linux online (again, for free), download them, run them in VMWare Player and decide which distribution is right for you.
You can run several virtual machines at once (depending on the resources of your host computer). You can network them together and treat them as if they were stand-alone machines, each with its own operating system.
I run Fedora 14 for 64 bit. I would go with Fedora over Red Hat except if you want to run Oracle. The downside with Fedora, they only now do Intel x86 for both 32 and 64 bit systems. They dropped PPC which bummed me out since I have quite a few PPC machines. Of course not I don’t have to keep updating them every 6 months to a year anymore.
The only thing with FC14 is I have not been able to get VMWare to run where as it worked with FC13. Other software like xine to play DVD’s is available at RPM Fusion but however, the site will not carry libdvdcss which is essential to play them.
I dual-boot Win 98SE & Puppy Linux (4.3.1) on a HP Vectra VL Series 7, 266mhz Pentium 2, 192mb PC100 RAM. (IIRC This system's around 12 years old.) I'm very pleased with the performance.
And for really old systems, there's always Damn Small Linux, which reportedly will run on a 486 w. 8mb RAM. It's only about a 50mb download.
I use Linux Mint on a HP VL400DT, Pentium 3 w. 512mb PC133 RAM. (No install, I just use the live CD.)
And Knoppix might be worth a look.
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