[Nottingham] Starting out

[Martin]

Stephen Hodgson wrote [Top posting the MS reverse chronillogical way]:
> Hi Jay.
> 
> The first step is to select your distribution - there are literally 
> hundreds out there although you should probably stick with a popular and 
[...]
> If you're after a quicker start then the most popular 'newbie' or 
> 'Windows user' distros are SuSE (www.suse.com) and Mandrake 
> (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/).  Both of these distros include GUI 
> installation routines and point-and-click system administration tools as 
> well as automatic disk partitioning.  You'll also find distros included 
> on the cover discs of magazines like Linux format (which I believe costs 
> about £5-7).

Mandrake 9.2 is on the disks with this month's Linux Format. £6.49 for 
the mag with DVD. The CD version is cheaper, but the DVD saves a lot of 
hassle.

Only thing to look out for is whether you have an LG CD *ROM* drive in 
your system. LG very stupidly reused one of the ATAPI commands to reload 
the drive's firmware. This has tripped up all the kernels enabled for 
packet writing into inadvertantly destroying the LG firmware, including 
Mandrake 9.2. LG CDRWs are not affected, but still check the Mandrake 
site to confirm. There is now a revised kernel with packet writing 
disabled, until a better fix is found...

There's also a few updates to download ofcourse. When you install, only 
install what you actually need. You can very easily install the 
remaining multi-GigaBytes of stuff once you've got the system running 
and updated.

Mandrake will be a little slow on a 300MHz machine, but still useable if 
you have more than 128MB of RAM.

And it comes with more utilities than I know about!


There's also PuppyLinux, a very small distro, on the Linux Format DVD.

... And then there are our NLUG Morphix CDs for a very quick start-up 
taster!!!


Good luck,

and welcome to the group.

Cheers,
Martin


[... In reply to ...]
> jay haynes <jasonz249 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>>
>> I have now got a Compaq 300mhz celeron and am ready to start. Where do 
>> i get a copy of linux from to install. Also what tools can you use 
>> with Linux , does it have sed or awk or any shell programming utilities.
[...]


-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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