Installation...

[The_YongGrand]

I don't know why in Linux installation system all of them are in the tar.gz format. And they're not usual executables.... How to do it anyway?

And is Linux downloadable? I heard that certain Linux OS are free and the size are quite small.

What about Damn Small Linux (DSL)?

[bob_man_uk]

indeed most linux distibutions are free, if you have never tried using it before then i suggest you try out fedora or mandrake.

the packages that come as tar.gz are usually source files and require you to compile them yourself, if this sounds a bit daunting to you dont wory because there is alternative methods, feodra and mandrake use RPM's (redhat package manager packages) which contain all the information you would need to install that particular package, another distribution (and my personal favourite) is debian which uses dpkg to install .deb files, for each of these distributions there are a couple of tools available to help install all the packages you require AND their dependancies these tools are apt-get and synaptic (synaptic requires you use a window manager)

does this help or have i confused you further?

MattyG

[rspassey]

You often have to download linux and burn it as an iso file, then use it as a boot disk and install it from there, thats what I had to do with Ubuntu and Damn Small Linux.

[moistmule]

I agree with bob!

compilation is easy:

tar xvf .tar.gz
cd
./configure
make
su (enter root password when prompted)
make install

Done!!

if you haven't got a dependency it'll tell you what its called and usually where to get it

[rspassey]

Originally Posted by The_YongGrand What about Damn Small Linux (DSL)?

personally I love it, great for older pcs with very little ram, it is also installable and able to be useds as a live cd. Makes my old pc with 128mb RAM run incredibly fast for its specs.

[The_YongGrand]

So I can burn into CD using its ISO image and then auto-install it into hard-disk just like WinXP?

And... in the DSL download section, there's so much ISOs everywhere to be downloaded. Which one is suitable?

[moistmule]

just get it from here: ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/damnsmal...nt/dsl-1.5.iso. ok it may be slow from ireland, but its only 50MB

burn it, and run it

(HDD install, optional, http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i..._the_Hard_Disk)

[rspassey]

You can test run it as a live cd first before installing it