new build

[bailey]

ok guy's
I have started to build linux system,don't laugh at me but I have a old cirex 486dx4 machine with 40 meg ram and a 2 gig hd, I am half way loading red hat mandrake 6.5, I have no experience doing this at all, in fact I have never even seen a linux system before, so any help will be greatly aprecitead.

[bailey]

well it was a complete falure, it took 3 hrs to load up and then it took forever to do anything, then I found out that I did not set the partitins correctly, reformated, then reinstalled, it took 30 min this time to install everything, still way too slow to be useable for anything, removed everything and installed w95, and all is running just fine, fast and smothe, so I ask myself why would anyone want a system like that, it did not impress me at all.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

next time you try to install, you might want to do a text install, if you're using a newer version of whatever the hell "red hat mandrake" is.

as distributions go, both Red Hat and Mandrake are rather bloated....maybe you should have tried Debian or SlackWare. beyond that, you should probably not even think about Gnome, Enlightenment or KDE on that old beater...if you were using Mandrake, you should have also recompiled your kernel for a 486 chip....it might even have been a good idea to go back into the XFree86 archives and grabbed an older version....windowmaker is pretty light and useable, as far as window managers go...

as for why someone would want a system like that....well, lose X and you can run an NT domain or a good web server in 10M of memory, under a reasonable load. it's a multiuser system and optimized as such, if you don't see the benefit of that, then maybe you should stick with windows 95.

as far as why would anyone want a system like that...tell us, why would anyone? that's just 486 abuse, and as for 40M of memory, when I load X with Gnome and sawfish and the rest of the goodies, I'm running at 40M, at the very least.

did someone tell you that it would run well on a 486, or what? a 486 doesn't run any modern OS well, but if you want a system that might run tolerably, look at NetBSD....or even Minix-VMD, OS/2, Windows 3.1 or NT 3.1-3.51.

[Statica]

No matter your best intentions WLSB, its impossible to get some people to think beyond the pretty little virus that M$ sends out, that should literally be chucked out of the window in the first place.

In general from what I have seen, and this might not even be related to your situation Bailey, people come to Linux more like a fad, everyone's running it hence I gotta run it, they have little or no clue as to what they want their computer to accomplish, and what not to accomplish. If you have what u want in mind then you can look further into what OS you want.

However if one is content with buying hardware to keep the M$ code happy then u cant argue against that .. its pretty, you dont need to know ANYTHING about computers, and to top it all off you get a little drum that beats while it copies files for you!!! U cant top that!

Its not that, u need to be a programmer to get the NIX to run, nor is it that there are very few avenues of getting reasonable help... its just that people must get used to the idea of knowing how their computer functions, about what you need with it. Out in the real world, the choices go beyond whether you want to install the Jungle Theme for your Windows desktop, its about making informed choices on what you will be using Linux for, how secure a desktop/server do you want? Just seeing 2 GB space and then packing in every service available to humankind is not the way to go.

Hopefully you have better luck with it Bailey should u decide to ever give it a try, and before you do, do some reading on what it entails, what it comes with and what it needs and decide on what you need.

I've heard of Linux being pushed down by people who like NTx, but this is the first time someone prefered Win95.

As for me, I will turn over the functions of this 486DX/100 w 16MB RAM & 540 MB harddrive over to its duties of guarding my workstations.

Cheers.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

well, personally...I feel that the OS should fit the usage, and it should be well thought out before implementation. I just think it's foolish to install on a slow computer, then complain about how slow it is. of course it's going to be slow for X, all implementations of X are slow...with the possible exception of IRIX...I have a 166Mhz running Solaris 7 that would make his 486 w/Linux look fast in comparision, but the beauty of *nix is that the places it really excels don't require GUIs...X is actually a hindrance and should be shut down in most cases.....if you jump into *nix without knowing what you're getting into, no one can be blamed if you don't like the outcome.

[bailey]

well thanks a lot for the replies, as far as my needs are, I don't have any.
I just wanted to use it for a learning experience, I already have learned a lot about it in the past few days, got the book called lunix ver 6 unleashed and there is a lot of information in there that I have no idea of what they are talking about, but at least now I know something about how to install it. kinda reminds me of the days when I was just starting to learn about dos v 2.o and cpm.
I have no need for any kind of server at this time, so any real use of it's benifits will unrealized, all I want to do is to get familear with it, yes I knew that it wqas a very slow system, but I did knot know that w95 and w98se would run on it at a not too slow rate eather,
I am just experimenting around with it, got to do something in my spare time, and that is the only system I have to play with at this time, some day I may build a new computer with the parts and a new case,motherboard, as I do have a celery 300a sitting on the shelf doing nothing.
so, I am not bashing anything, just learning.
thanks

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

GNU/Linux really is a good system, it's still light years ahead of GNU/HURD and GNU/Darwin...but the distributions have been getting bloated lately. you really should look at an older distribution...maybe Red Hat 5.2 or Caldera 1.3...but Slackware is always my first choice, they have a great archive, too.

I bet it would be a more pleasurable experience if you started with a distribution that was more suited for your machine......then you could just upgrade all the stuff that you find that you need....and really, building your own software is half the fun of GNU/Linux.....

if you're really interested in Linux and want to learn how it works, I would suggest you look at the Linux from Scratch Project.


BTW, there's a Linux 6.0???? imagine that, here I am at 2.4.4 and there's been a version 6.0 the whole time.