Linux For Beginners- Easy To Install

[docduke 0]

I am one more who finds OpenSuSE my preferred system. It has a very solid installer, with options to allow a very high degree of customization. There are two downsides, however. One is that it is so complex that it is difficult for newcomers. The other is that a recent version of it requires relatively powerful hardware: lots of RAM and a powerful CPU to support all its graphics.

 

I just spent a few days trying to get Linux running on an old (born around 1995) computer with 64 MB RAM. After trying half a dozen flavors of Linux, I found that only Damn Small Linux (DSL) was capable of booting from a CD on it. The problem was that all the other distros I tried had long ago migrated from the Syslinux boot handler to the Isolinux boot handler. I have now learned that Syslinux is better at dealing with really old hardware.

 

I strongly recommend using a "Live CD" of any distro you are considering, and specifically one that is tailored for your CPU. I have a new computer with an AMD64 (Athlon64) CPU. I have recently been testing the Debian distribution. That is the "grandfather" of Ubuntu, Knoppix, Xandros and the variant of Xandros that lives inside Asus Eee PC netbooks. Debian has a very large number of installable support packages, but I learned the hard way that those packages may be difficult or impossible to install on one of the "children," such as Ubuntu or an Eee PC. I'm still not sure exactly what the problem is, but I have chased down a lot of bunny trails finding out what doesn't work!

 

The advantage of the Live CD approach is that you can test lots of things without having anything changed on your computer. This is a major advantage, in contrast to installing a package you are curious about on a Windows machine, then trying to remove it, without leaving undesired dlls, etc, on the machine after the uninstall.

[liod 0]

How about Fedora? Is it a good Linux distro?

[iGuest 3]

Fedora installation getting stuck in initrd.imgLinux For Beginners- Easy To Install

I have a 80GB hard disk with WinXP already installed.I had tried installing Fedora 10 earlier without creating new partitions(real foolish and ignorant of me   ) and tried creating partitions using Fedora10 bootable.It didnt work.Then I created a free partition and again tried installing Fedora10 using same procedure of creating 'Custom layout'.This time it again didnt work and in addition also corrupted Windows.I reinstalled Windows XP and used Partition magic to create a free partition of 20 GB in ext3 format.Now when I try to boot Fedora 10 the screen says 'Loading initrd.Img and the PC restarts.This keeps on going. I tried with Fedora 12 bootable but now my PC says "LOADING initrd.Img' and then says 'not enough memory' and nothing goes forward.

My windows working fine.My hard disk (80GB,two 20 GB parttions in NTFS,one 20GB partition in FAT32 and one 20GB partition in EXT3 format).RAM 512MB

Help  as I want dual boot in my system ...

-question by Ganesh Kuppan

 

[iGuest 3]

try slax or puppy linux. They both can be installed on a 256 memcard. Configurations/settings are also saved. Modules/repos are easily obtain. The easiest distro to install is slax. Just download the iso, extract and that's it!tweak the slax with the modules you can download.

-reply by metal_ice

[Vistz 1]

Ubuntu is (in my opinion) the simplest distro of Linux available. You can download it here:

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

I like it because if you're not up to using the terminal, the GUI provides alternatives so that you can still complete whatever task you need to do. Also, it's lightweight (like other distros). My favorite is that it doesn't require any drivers when your print documents. I say this because I'm on a laptop and many times, I go to a friends house and I need to print something. I just hook up my laptop to the printer and the printer is automatically detected.

[vhortex 1]

I just hook up my laptop to the printer and the printer is automatically detected.

Ubuntu is on the road of making it MS Windows clone with Linux backend. It detects plug-n-play hardwares and install the correct driver if it is available and downloads the missing driver. The system also have Windows compatibility mode for some device drivers.

[yordan 10]

Ubuntu is on the road of making it MS Windows clone with Linux backend. It detects plug-n-play hardwares and install the correct driver if it is available and downloads the missing driver. The system also have Windows compatibility mode for some device drivers.

Is the "Windows compatibility mode" an automatic feature, or do you have to manually look for Wine, install it and configure it and look for Windows drivers having to be adapted in order to be configurable inside Wine?

[vhortex 1]

Is the "Windows compatibility mode" an automatic feature"

It is turned on automatic making your Ubuntu experience a cross between windows XP and Linux. I was able to install 47 different windows software with no problems but uninstalling them is not easy since the installer sometimes complain about write accesss to missing drive. Ubuntu was passing the partition data the same way Linux does when uninstaller are being run (dev01/xxx and other similar drive info).

Maybe when they upgrade the support to the level of Vista/Windows 7, this issue will be removed. It must be on my side alone but almost all drivers that I am using for windows XP work on Ubuntu and the only one that complains was my Realtek built in sound.

I never upgraded the kernel since June last year but periodic patches are being applied.