new to it

[Karthik1019]

Well, my sister is going off to college and she's leaving behind a computer that no one is going to be using. It's been rediculously inundated with spyware and even a trojan or two so I'm thinking of just killing it completely with a reformat. (We got her a Mac to hopefully help aleviate her problem.) I'm also thinking of experimenting with Linux. That said, here are the stats:

Dell Inspiron 4100
833 Mhz PIIIm
128 Mb SDRAM PC133
20 GB HDD
ATI Mobility Radeon

It came preinstalled with WinXP back in '02. If I recall correctly, it ran XP just fine until my sister got a hold of it. Anyway, I've been reading up on Fedora Core 4 recently. Does this sound okay? Any other suggestions for something better? My only worry is that the memory requirement for "Graphical Mode" is 192 Mb, (128 + 64?, strange number) and the reccomended is 256? What is text-mode, which is apparently all I can do, and will it detract from my experience? I'm not willing to invest a single penny of my money in this machine by the way, just hours of my time. Well, thanks for the help that I'm sure will come. Looking forward to it.

[Karnevil9]

I would consider buying (at some point) another 128 mb of ram for that computer, providing you can find one fairly cheap. An 833 mhz PIII is not too shaby as a spare computer and 256mb is about the baseline recommended memory for just about any operating system. I am surprised that it came with windows XP because it can run slow on 128 and most folks here in the past recommend about 512mb for xp.
That said, I don't know how well Fedora is doing these days, but when it was red hat it was one of the better RPM systems. You can go to the Linux links section of this forum and look up some of the system requirements for various Linux Flavors to see if there may be another that will work with 128mb.

You can also look into some of the Live CD versions of some Linux systems such as SuSE, Knoppix, Mepis and Ubuntu are all good canidates. There is also a live CD version of Slackware called Slax, I believe, though I don't know how good it is.
The text interface is similar to running an old Dos system. Instead of a fancy desktop with icons you click on to get things to run, you have to type in commands to do it. Some people swear by this method and though I am no good at it, it really is the best way to learn how to work Linux, if you have the time to invest in the learning. Every Linux system I have ever tried to run at some point comes down to knowing how to do things from the command line.

192mb of ram really amounts to three sticks of 64mbs ram. Not to many years ago when 64mbs sticks of ram were the largest out there, 192mb would not be so strange.

[Karthik1019]

Thanks for the reply. My knowledge of command line stuff isn't that great. It is interesting and efficient and all, but I never really got myself to get past making the fruit directories in the book that came with MSDOS 6.something. That said, a GUI would be better for me. I've read good things about Ubuntu on the web and searching through here. That's cool and all, except for that under the Dell Inspiron 4100 hardware compatability thing the seemingly official site says:

"After a default install the computer freezes anytime a power management function kicks in, including pull the power plug. After play with ACPI and APM on the 2.6.8.1 kernel I went back to 2.6.7 with APM and now everything works as expected."

Do I know what this means? Not really. I kinda know what a kernal is. But I certianly don't know how to do what this quote suggests. Regardless, I just want to try the most comprehensive version of Linux that can be run without issues on my hardware. It also needs to be pretty easy to install since I know nothing. To be honest, I knew nothing about Linux other than that it wasn't Windows and that most versions of it are free just a few days ago. My research on wikipedia told me that Fedora was from the USA (patriotism yeah!) and from red hat, which I have heard of. (not to mention it had the most helpful and easy website of what I saw and plenty of preinstalled stuff.) Thats where the interest in Fedora came from in it came from. Wikipedia's Linux comparo and info was really helpful by the way. Suse looks like a good option too. The problem is, I'm sleezy and don't want to pay for anything since I spent all of my money upgrading my newer computers. The question is, if I download the DVD iso from the ftp servers, will I only get the eval version that stops updating after a while? The DVD iso says eval, the 5 cd ones say proffesional, is there a difference or is there no way around it? Is open suse just as good? Thanks. I'm very confused right now.

[Karnevil9]

I haven't been to the SuSE sight in a while, so I don't know what they are offering. The last version of SuSE that I downloaded was 3.9.1 I believe. It was the first time SuSE had a free download on their site and it was only one CD disk. They had eval versions in the past that let you "play" around a bit but not much more. Maybe that has changed. SuSE is about the most user friendly. Maybe that has changed. Ubuntu, Knoppix, and Mepis have full Live CD versions. One CD you download. You change your Bios options to boot from CD first, then turn the computer off and put the cd in, boot up the system and you have Linux running and it is not even installed on your hardrive. If you decide you like it and want to install it you can right off the same CD. I was playing with the three of them the other day and I think Knoppix is still the best of the bunch. I believe that because Knoppix has the most programs on the one CD. There is so much that it is a bit confusing, but everything is there. Knoppix is also a little more difficult to install to the hardrive but that is because Mepis and Ubuntu put a nice little icon on the desktop that says hardrive. Knoppix you have to go into their help menu.

There are four sites I recommend you look at. www.linuxquestions.org. They have a forum that is version specific to all the Linux systems. WWW.linuxiso.org, where you can find a little info about each system and a mirror site for the download. Justlinux, forget if it's .net or .org, whcih has a lot of info and another that I believe is called LinuxCD, I'll check and get back to you, but they review all the linux systems.

I liked Red hat when it was red hat. Easy to use. And I liked the first versions of Fedora when it changed, but at about the sane time I started to lean towards Debian based systems. Unfortunately all Linux systems have some areas where you need to be more familiar and I just couldn't find time to learn it to the point where I can make it work effortlessly, so I only play around with it from time to time.

[Karthik1019]

Wow, thanks for the five am response. For now, I'm thinking either open suse or gentoo. Both seem very well documented so the guides will probably help me insall without too much trouble. I'll try the live cd versions of both (and maybe ubuntu, which apparently has problems on the hard drive). I'll probably go with suse though. My next concern is file system. According to wikipedia, they can both use NTFS. Can you actually make their partitions NTFS or is it just that they can read NTFS partitions but not write to them? If I do make my partitions ext3, which seems to be the most popular one, then will I be able to access them over my WinXP home network, the same way I can access the fat32 partition on my Win98 computer? Thanks.

[Karnevil9]

Unless something has changed recently that I am not aware of, which is very possible, Linux doesn't use any file system that windows uses. It may be able to read NTFS but I doubt they can use them. I think it is simply saying it can see an NTFS system for the purpose of partitioning the hard drive. Windows uses NTFS and fat32. NTFS can read fat32 but not the other way round. If you leave your windows system in place and install SuSE or Gentoo you will have a dual boot system. When you turn on your PC you will get a Welcome screen asking you which one you want to go to. Since you said you were wiping XP anyway, and with the virus's and trojans your sister had on her PC, I think that is probably a good idea if there is nothing critical on the machine, you will just boot to Linux. If you decide to dual boot, put windows on the system first. Linux can see that there is a windows OS on the hardrive and will no to create a partition. Windows will not see Linux at all and will simply install right over it. Bascially, Linux aknowledges that windows exist and people use it and have it, Windows does not bother to acknowledge the existence of Linux.
One word about Gentoo, and again keep in mind that I have not used Gentoo too much before, it is one of the system that has not been known for it's user friendliness. Unless there have been some modifictaions over the past few years it may require a bit more Linux knowledge to get it up and running. There is a system called Vector, which I believe is based from Gentoo (maybe it was Slackware, I am 100% sure now) that I have used and liked that was a bit easiser to install.
I think the problem that you read about with the Ubuntu install was a simple problem that you run into from time to time with Linux. Sometimes you have a install something on differently than it's set up to by default. There is usually a simple command in the systems help menu that tells you to try it. Usually nothing more difficult than typing "boot=apm" and hit enter, so I wouldn't let that scare you away from Ubuntu.

[Karthik1019]

Since no one will use this computer for anything serious, I suppose I could just use it for fun to try out a bunch of different distros. Assuming it's not difficult to uninstall or overwrite linux at all. I just really want to start somewhere simple. Ubuntu looks easy (assuming I can fix that kernal issue), so does Suse. I think I'll try Suse first. I don't think I'm really ready to dual boot two versions of linux, and I really don't need another Windows computer. I guess the last question is this, probably stupid one: The computer has a bootable DVD/CD-RW drive; booting from cd's works just fine, so will it also work just fine if I boot from a DVD? The dell knowledge base isn't helping me. I don't feel like using up five disks.

[Karnevil9]

If you mean you have one combo DVD/CD r/w drive installed, the answer is yes as long as the DVD you are using is a bootable disk. The bios setting is really telling the computer which devide to use to boot, Harddrive, CD player, floppy other etc. Not what kind of disk is the machine.
One common mistake that many people make when they download Linux to CD or DVD for the first time they set their disk burner to bootable disk or data disk. You want to set your burner to burn an ISO disk, or on some burner programs it is simply stated as image disk. Image, not video or photo.
When I first started to fool around a bit with Linux, I read about the differnt operating systems, cose the ones I liked and downloaded all of them. I kept installing and uninstalling different versions until I found those I liked. Some time later, I gave the ones I no longer used away here at the forum to anyone who wanted one of them. Some people are in areas that only have modems and it takes a real long time to download that way.

[Karthik1019]

So I go to suse mirror in indiana straight from the opensuse website. Click to download the DVD iso and then leave knowing it will take a few hours. I come back to check on it ten minutes later. We've got 5Mbps cable internet, but that's still more than rediculous? The mirror had said it was 4.3 gigs. So I go to 'My Documents' where it was saved, and it said:

SUSE-9.3-Eval-DVD.iso (I have file extensions showing)
NTI iso file
188,857 KB

Since when are DVD's that small? Are NTI iso files special and compressed or something? I have a program called NTI dragon burn on my computer. Is it related to this?

Edit: As far as I can tell, all of the downloads are that size. The only one I found that was 4 GB is straight from ftp.suse.com.

[Karnevil9]

I don't know much about NTI since I never used them. The only thing on their site that may have some meaning to what you are saying is this "For complete data protection and recovery, users can burn layouts to a disc or save them as complete disc image files. Using similar creation techniques". I don't know what they mean by a layout. I guess you could always try and load the disk and see what happens. But you can fit that on a CD, so don't use an expensive DVD to do it. Most of the systems I have downloaded for Linux has been doen on 650mb CD's. 4 gigs is a lot. If I remember correctly Knoppix is 2 gigs but they compress there info onto a 650mb cd. On the loading end it uncompresses. Most Linux OS downloads have a check program called md5sum that you can download to your computer that will check the info you downloaded to see if it's all there. Found it at SuSE.
check your ISO images files
After having downloaded the ISO image(s) you can make sure your download was successful by checking the md5sums for each file. If you are running Linux, run the command

md5sum
(replace by the name of the ISO file)
A free md5sum checker for other operating systems can be found at e.g. http://md5deep.sourceforge.net/ .

Compare the output of the md5sum checker with the respective value(s) provided on our download page. If the numbers are identical, the download was successful

[ffreeloader]

Wow, thanks for the five am response. For now, I'm thinking either open suse or gentoo.

Gentoo is a distro that has advanced Linux users in mind. It's not a good place for a Linux newbie to start, unless you're a computer genius. As to SuSe I've heard it has pretty good hardware support, but I've never used it personally.

I'd recommend that you download a copy of Knoppix and try it before you do anything else. It will run about as slow as watching paint dry with the amount of ram you have, but Knoppix is very good at hardware detection and you'll be able to see what, if any, hardware is going to be difficult to work with under Linux as many laptops have hardware that the manufacturers have not made the specs available for developers other than Windows developers.

If Knoppix will run all the hardware then some of the other distro's that are related to Debian will most likely run too, such as Ubuntu. However, if the video card has shared memory rather than dedicated memory you'll definitely need to get more ram or no matter what you put on it it's going to be slow.

[Karthik1019]

ffreeloader, thanks for the reply. this is the chip the computer has:

http://www.ati.com/products/MobilityRadeon/index.html

I don't think it has any dedicated memory. As far as knoppix goes, I'll look into and run the live cd. especially if this ISO turns out to be bad. Thing is, I only have one day before I head down to Atlanta with my family to drop my sister off at college, and when I come back, its basically time for me to pack up and head off to school myself, so I can't "watch the paint dry" for too long. Karnevil, thanks for all the responses. It's three AM right now, so I don't feel like going to my desktop and booting it up and checking the iso's integrity. This afternoon, I read up on the md5sums to see what they did, but the ftp servers wouldn't let me download them. I got them to work now though, so I'll check that file first thing in the morning. I only need that one long number for the dvd right? why does the readme file have one? I guess another important question is this: if a piece of software availabe for download on the internet says it has a linux version, will it run on any distro, as long as it isn't a distro specific filetype? (I forget what the file extension is, txsomething?, the one that all linux/unix/solaris etc can read.) Thanks.

[Karnevil9]

I don't know what long number you are referring to so I can't answer that question, but to your second question, yes. they should work. SuSE is more proprietory than other linux systems because it is commercial, so I don't know how their product differs from a programming stand point. All other Linux systems are very similiar at the core, so if you have a NVidia graphics card and download the NVidia drivers for Linux it will work on all the systems that I am aware of.

[ffreeloader]

If your graphics chip is the plain old Mobillity Radeon it has either 8 or 16 mB of ram. If it's the 5000 it has either 16 or 32 mB of ram. If it's the 7500 it has 32, 64, or 128 mB of ram. This chip shouldn't be a problem, at least not the Debian tree of distro's, but you'll need to check the rest of the hardware such as built in modems, ethernet cards, etc.... That's usually where the problems come in because they were strictly designed to run with Windows.

You'll need the md5 checksum numbers for both the readme file and iso file. You want to make sure no one has messed with the iso file and that no one has messed with the readme file too. You don't want to be reading instructions and information that has been altered by a hacker.

[Karthik1019]

I downloaded a md5sum checker and checked the file. It didn't match up. Then again, neither did any from the other mirrors. I went to the direct novell one, the one that said that it was a 4 gig file when you checked its properties, but then when I clicked it to download, it was also 184 mb. Sum didn't match up there either. So, I burned the "DVD image" to a CD, and it seems fine, no errors at all. I'm kinda suspicious, but what's the worst that can happen? If it doesn't work out, I'll just try Knoppix and/or Ubuntu, or maybe Kubuntu to be different? Is GNOME better than KDE? Can you use both and have an option to pick which one when you boot up the computer? Also, it's just a plain old Mobility Radeon. No numbers attached.

[ffreeloader]

If it doesn't work out, I'll just try Knoppix and/or Ubuntu, or maybe Kubuntu to be different? Is GNOME better than KDE? Can you use both and have an option to pick which one when you boot up the computer? Also, it's just a plain old Mobility Radeon. No numbers attached.

Gnome or KDE better? I don't know. I think it's strictly personal like or dislike. Me? I prefer Gnome. It's easier on my eyes and it seems to run faster to me. In Debian you can choose which one you want, or you can choose any one of about a dozen others too, and yes, in Debian anyway you'll be given a choice because the default desktop installation installs them both . I've never run Ubuntu so I'm not sure if you can install other gui's or not. I don't see why not but I know very little about Ubuntu.

[Karthik1019]

Sorry, I was away for the weekend. I did however manage to do some work on this project though. First, I tried to boot off that small "DVD" image disk. It only let me go to a certain point before there were some errors. So I did some research fora few hours and found out that if you use some special ftp programs, the download will work the way it should. So right now, I'm donwloading the DVD image for suse. I also managed to download a cd image for ubuntu and load it up on an even older laptop:

Dell Inspiron 3500
Pentium II 300 MHz
64 MB RAM

This, no one will use, I guarantee it. It was underneath a bunch of my elementary school books in a cabinet in the study. I really just wanted to get some experience today. The problem here, is that my password isn't working. I swear I typed it in correctly during setup, its the same one I use for everything. When you type it in, no astersisks some up or anything, it just stays blank and the cursor stays in the same place, so maybe something went wrong. But there was a password confirmation entry too, and it didn't say anything was wrong? Is there a way to bypass this so I can start using Linux?

[Karthik1019]

Nevermind. It took almost an hour, but I did something and it fixed the problem. I really don't know what. First I used google to find a way to get into the root shell without a password, then I used google to find a way to add a new user. It turns out, using Karthik as a user name wouldn't work, but using karthik1019 would. I don't know, something about starting with a lowercase letter and having numbers after it. Too bad setup didn't make that clear. Neither did the website; it said the default (your first name) would work fine. Oh well, time for sleep, 3:40 AM.