philothea Posted June 16, 2005 Posted June 16, 2005 [quote name='photosynthesis' date='Jun 16 2005, 12:00 AM']how do you manage the partitions? [right][snapback]613073[/snapback][/right] [/quote] I'm not sure what you're asking... you mean, when sharing the drive between Windows and Linux? With a modern Linux, the installation program will see that you have Windows there. It'll resize the Windows partition(s), and put various Linux partitions in the resulting free space. (The exact details vary depending on the distribution.) Then the installation program will show you a frightening list of strange partition labels and ask you if that's okay. Should be fine, but you will back up anything important first, right?
photosynthesis Posted June 16, 2005 Author Posted June 16, 2005 how much free hard drive space is required to download a good distribution?
philothea Posted June 16, 2005 Posted June 16, 2005 [quote name='photosynthesis' date='Jun 16 2005, 10:36 AM']how much free hard drive space is required to download a good distribution? [right][snapback]613254[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Most distros are downoaded as CD "ISO" images, so you'll need a CD's worth of space... 600 meg, I think? You could download one ISO, burn it, clear it off, get the next one, etc.
p-hawk Posted June 16, 2005 Posted June 16, 2005 If you're looking to shop around for distros, check out linuxiso.org. They have distros for download and summaries of the broad-stroke features. Here's a very generic start page: [url="http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/introtolinux.html"]http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/introtolinux.html[/url] distrowatch.com reviews different distros. If you have a LOT of free time, and want to get your hands both wet and held at the same time, you could try my distro of choice, Gentoo. But research specific distros before you try to install something. And back up your hard drive before you start. If you can find a linux users group (or LUG) in your area, you may be able to a) attend an installfest, where a bunch of people get together and install linux and eat pizza, or b) find some sucker willing to help you install. LUGs can be found at [url="http://lugww.counter.li.org/"]http://lugww.counter.li.org/[/url] Hope that helps! :ph34r:
photosynthesis Posted June 16, 2005 Author Posted June 16, 2005 I've decided to download the ISO files for Mandriva Limited Edition 10.2. I'm burning it to a CD right now. is this a good beginner version? I ordered a copy of Linux for Dummies that's supposed to come in the mail soon so whenever it comes in I'm going to install it!
philothea Posted June 16, 2005 Posted June 16, 2005 Mandriva's the best for newbies, I think. I want to try it someday! Enjoy. I know you'll have fun.
photosynthesis Posted June 18, 2005 Author Posted June 18, 2005 I just installed Mandriva Linux. It went reasonably well... HOWEVER.... how the heck do you install software in linux? I am trying to install OpenOffice and I keep getting these tar files and I have no idea what to do with them, and linux for dummies is being really vague. I am also having trouble running RPM's...any advice?
philothea Posted June 18, 2005 Posted June 18, 2005 What is the name of the file you got as Open Office? To install an RPM, you need to be root, and type: rpm -i <name of rpm> I usually do rpm -ihv <name of rpm> because that gives a progress bar, and some text feedback
photosynthesis Posted June 18, 2005 Author Posted June 18, 2005 [quote name='philothea' date='Jun 18 2005, 04:10 PM']What is the name of the file you got as Open Office? To install an RPM, you need to be root, and type: rpm -i <name of rpm> I usually do rpm -ihv <name of rpm> because that gives a progress bar, and some text feedback [right][snapback]615458[/snapback][/right] [/quote] where do I type that? like in what program? in the terminal?
photosynthesis Posted June 18, 2005 Author Posted June 18, 2005 [quote name='philothea' date='Jun 18 2005, 04:10 PM']What is the name of the file you got as Open Office? To install an RPM, you need to be root, and type: rpm -i <name of rpm> I usually do rpm -ihv <name of rpm> because that gives a progress bar, and some text feedback [right][snapback]615458[/snapback][/right] [/quote] I tried to install an RPM and it finished installing and all I got was a stupid tarball file.... I have no idea how to install those? Do you k now how? this is so confusing!
photosynthesis Posted November 12, 2005 Author Posted November 12, 2005 This semester I've been using SuSE, but I got fed up with it because it was using SO much memory, so I just installed an Ubuntu CD I got in the mail about a month ago... so far so good!!!
philothea Posted November 12, 2005 Posted November 12, 2005 I will be interested to hear how you like it!
scardella Posted November 12, 2005 Posted November 12, 2005 (edited) Sorry, I don't live on phatmass, but I wish I did... I didn't know newer installers could non-destructively repartition drives... Don't they have to be FAT32? WinME should be using that anyway. It doesn't support ntfs in the first place. There are all sorts of nasty names you should be calling it, though.. whatever you do, don't run this as root: rm -rf / It's a good way to trash your system. I like Knoppix and Insert as troubleshooting tools. There's a nice nt/XP password reset bootable cd too. I certainly like debain's package management system, but it seems like it's always a little behind the curve. Actually, I need to check the latest YellowDog (for Mac hardware). I haven't yet seen if it supports my PowerMac G5.... I know, I'm all over the map, right now... OS X has kinda gotten me lazy, though I keep Terminal.app in my dock. I've done some foolish things w/ the command line tools.... Once, to create an ISO image, I did something like this: cat /dev/cdrom > something.iso I've also duplicated harddrives like that... DON'T DO IT THAT WAY! Ok, you've been warned. nmap is a cool tool... su gives me a power rush... renice when something isn't btw, does anyone know a good text-only word processing app that only does word wrapping and scrolling? Like that old wordperfect for dos (white on blue) or similar? how's this for being obfuscated? cd /; locate bin | grep -i `echo "fortune" `> ~/pathtofortune; chmod +x ~/pathtofortune; ~/pathtofortune > fortune.txt; cat fortune.txt; rm -f ~/pathtofortune Edited November 12, 2005 by scardella
photosynthesis Posted November 12, 2005 Author Posted November 12, 2005 [quote name='scardella' date='Nov 12 2005, 01:48 AM']Sorry, I don't live on phatmass, but I wish I did... I didn't know newer installers could non-destructively repartition drives... Don't they have to be FAT32? WinME should be using that anyway. It doesn't support ntfs in the first place. There are all sorts of nasty names you should be calling it, though.. [right][snapback]786272[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Well, this is the fourth Linux installation I've done... the first time I installed Fedora Core 3. That didn't go so well, and i couldn't figure out what the root username/password were, so I couldn't actually go in and use the operating system... so that didn't go so well. Then I installed Mandriva 2005. That went well, except Mandriva made my system painfully slow! And that installation deleted Windows. I couldn't deal with that... so I installed Windows again. After I got that set up, I installed SuSE to run in a seperate partition from Windows... It was an NTFS partition, I think... something like hda-2? I don't really know... I got sick of how SuSE/KDE was so slow and hogging all of my system resources, so I installed Ubuntu w/GNOME yesterday I reformatted the Linux partition and it installed over that. So far, so good. The system applications probably use about 85 mb of memory, which is way lower than KDE.
philothea Posted November 12, 2005 Posted November 12, 2005 Photo, I it appears that Novell (who bought SuSE) agrees with you. They've switched to using Gnome preferentially in the latest release.
photosynthesis Posted November 13, 2005 Author Posted November 13, 2005 [quote name='philothea' date='Nov 12 2005, 03:02 PM']Photo, I it appears that Novell (who bought SuSE) agrees with you. They've switched to using Gnome preferentially in the latest release. [right][snapback]786542[/snapback][/right] [/quote] cool!
photosynthesis Posted November 13, 2005 Author Posted November 13, 2005 (edited) anyone know how to install a file from source? for some reason, I messed up some apt-get thingermabobber thingy and I can't use apt-get anymore. Edited November 13, 2005 by photosynthesis
philothea Posted November 13, 2005 Posted November 13, 2005 (edited) [quote name='photosynthesis' date='Nov 13 2005, 04:43 PM']anyone know how to install a file from source? for some reason, I messed up some apt-get thingermabobber thingy and I can't use apt-get anymore. [right][snapback]787370[/snapback][/right] [/quote] (including steps you may have already done) -move (or copy) the tarball (.tar.gz) into the place where it should go (like /usr/bin or /home/claire/bin or whatever) - tar -xzvf <name of tarball> - ./configure - wait a while - make - wait a while longer - su to root - make install And you should be good to go. (You might also want to read the README or the INSTALL after you decompress the tarball.) Good luck! Edited November 13, 2005 by philothea
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