Linux Users

[Hohum]

How would a create a dual boot machine that boots straight into windows without making me choose windows everytime I bootup. Ideally I would Like to have linux act as if is not there until I want to boot into it.

You can do this by using a linux boot disc created during setup, instead of a boot loader on the hard drive itself.

http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/O...multiboot1.htm

At the bottom of the page:

Insert the boot disk and restart the computer to run Linux, keep the boot disk out of the floppy drive to boot Windows.

So if you did this, linux will never run unless you have the boot disc in your floppy drive during startup.

[Commander Marklar]

Most boot loaders (if not all) let you configure it so that you can have a default option, selected after a few seconds.

[Valken]

both Grub and LILO allow you to choose which OS to start by default via a small text file... they'll even let you change the timeout if needs be.

In fact, IIRC n00b installs like Mandrake let you pick what OS you want as default.

[gingerj]

Yeah i used to use Lilo, after 4secs if you didn't type linux in it would boot straight into windows my parents didn't even notice it happening So its pretty stealth if you have a quick time delay on it.

[Resonance]

@Hohum
Sweet, Thanks!

[gingerj]

Right i'm gonna go redhat again its been 4 years since i did it so im well rusty and have alot of questions hopefully you guys will be able to answer me.

First off i'm be using Red Hat 6.0 which uses the kernal 2.2.5-15. I know its old but thats all i have at my house and i can upgrade it once everything is working. My sepcs are a P3 600.

Right first off i have 13gigs of mp3s on this partition and i want them all on my red hat o/s which will once everything is tweaked and configured i want it to be my only os/partiton, so can i?/how can i migrate them over to my red hat partition i'm guessing samba? But I could be wrong.

Also during the opening sections of the installation i get a dialogue that says what keyboard do i have and the options are dk-latin1, dk, dvorak, emacs, emacs2, es, fi-latin1 and fi which once do i use? I'm using just a standard ps/2 keyboard that anyone can buy for ?4.

Also whats the easiest way to create a disc partition disc druid(the gui based one that comes with my red hat) or fdisk? When i use disk druid i get asked about a mount point wtf do i tell it?

How much space do you recommend for swap space?

Btw where the hell do i get linux drivers for my NIC card and GFX card? As obviously the plug and play wont work because when this o/s was compiled these peices of hardware weren't even out of the production line. My NIC card is a Netgear FA330 PCI Adaptor and i'm using a Radeon 9200 128MB card can i use generic gfx driver at first? Just to get working. Also will my TFT monitor work fine on this thing and how do i find out my allowable horizontal/verticle refresh range?

Also will i be able to install the latest KDE desktop environment build as it looks amazing And will amke my win98 SE environment look like a pile of **** and also will make my parents/little bro adapt better to there new linux life as it looks pretty

Also can anyone recommend free software to get like word processors (other than star office), Graphics packages (other than the gimp), winamp clones etc.....

[Valken]

Don't use an older version of Linux... it almost defeats the purpose... also, newer versions have more hardware support, even for your old system

Samba is fine to copy files from a windows computer on a network to a Linux system.

If you're making one partition only then the mount point is /

Swap space should be 1.5 x your ram up to 512MB and 1 x your ram over that

The latest KDE won't build for older kernels and libraries.

Star Office is gone, it's become OpenOffice, VLC Media player is good for audio and video and I don't know of anything better than The Gimp.

[gingerj]

So what distro do you suggest then?

Btw i'm not on a network, its just a single machine at home, so will that change the samba thing?

[Ish]

If you want 3d support in Linux right now then don't use Fedora Core 3 or any of the other distro's that have moved to (Valken corrent me if I get the name wrong - I have a memory like a sieve) XOrg: ATI haven't released drivers for this yet.

[gingerj]

WTF is the difference between fedora and redhat? And wtf is which all these different linux builds all of the sudden? Are they trying to alienate people on purpose or what? I remember 4 years ago there was about five distros people used (Red Hat, Debian, SuSe, Slackware, Mandrake) and and there was no sub-versions of the distros.

[Ish]

Fedora is a RedHat distribution basically. The distro's they call RedHat have gone more "corporate" and are more focussed on stability i.e. they aren't really that upto date.

Whereas Fedora is quite an up to date distro.

There's just more distro's because the community has been getting steadily bigger.

[gingerj]

Nah what i meant was before anyone could just pick up a distro and could use all the features now they are going down the financial ways and have server editions and all this other bollucks. Anyways i'm confused now as to what distro to use as they all have these **** turn offs due to the commercialsation and popularity of the distros.

Fedora: Is just a testing ground for new new versions of red hat.
Mandrake: Gets ahead of itself and is bug ridden.
Debian: Is still a pain in the ass to install and is really behind on features others promote but that is a good thing.
Gentoo: I dont like the sound of the long installation.

Hrm i'm confused its a toss up between mandrake and Fedora i suppose as mephis is still to fresh for me to look at it.

[Valken]

I would go with Mandrake... a similar setup and user experience to Redhat or Fedora but it just "feels" nicer to me.

Ish is right about certain distros moving to XOrg have no real 3D support for ATI hardware... I use Gentoo and Nvidia hardware so I'm happy with it.

If you're not in a network environment where are the files you want to copy to a new Linux partition? On the same disk?

[Ish]

I had the latest Mandrake a couple of months back when I was eval-ing them as to which way to go. And it was fine. I just found Fedora, personally, easier to work with.

One drawback with Fedora is that KDE is compiled minus MP3 support due to some legal rubbish or something. But its straightforward to get the MP3 support in it and if you end up with Fedora I can send you a link to a useful guide on doing it.

With both Mandrake and Fedora (having tried them!) your certainly going to find they come with everything you'd want in terms of home server. I use mine for developing web sites, Perl coding, C++ coding, MP3 listening, CD/DVD burning and all that came "out of the box". There was mail server stuff and all that cobblers too.

I've added a tonne of stuff since though . And its worth remembering that when people buy the "server edition" a lot of what there buying is the support. With a bit of technical know-how you can download and configure your basic distro to do anything you'd want.

[Jushin-Thunder-Liger]

My only LINUX experiance was with a troublesome and botched debian install i did for someone at work, i found it needlessly complicated.

I am interested having an LINUX OS on my PC for web-browsing and p2p downloading.
I have 2 HD's 1 isnt even formatted yet, is it posible to stick Mandrake on it and have an option to boot in either XP or Linux?