Re: Linux for Dummies

Don H wrote:

....
But then, I was trying to install on a notebook/laptop with only 60g
capacity. Did work, sort of, with SuSE 10.1, but gobbled up lots of hard
disk space and produced a flickering screen. (even after dodging ACPI).

Interesting...I've installed SUSE 10.1 on my Notebook to duel (sic) boot with Windwos XP. The 80G hard disk has 30G[1] allocated for Windwos, leaving 50G for SUSE 10.1. Of that 50G, around 38G (about 75% or 3/4) is free and available AFTER installing a LOT of stuff.

[1] of that 30G a 2G partition is formatted with vfat to allow data transfer from Linux to Windwos; the other 28G is formatted with NTFS.

I have also installed SUSE 10.1 on a computer with a 850M (that's MEG, not GIG) hard disk - that currently has around 20% (143M) free[2]. Admittedly it doesn't have X, or a lot of other stuff installed; it only has what is necessary for its job.

[2] The missing space has gone into a swap partition.

In neither install do I have screen flicker.

....

Which latter might require initial partitioning of hard disk, but how much
space to allot ? (varies with distro?), and of what type (eg. SuSE 10.1 uses
ext2).

My SUSE 10.1 uses ReiserFS by default. With regard to space to allocate, the SUSE installer was pretty good at guessing/suggesting partition sizes...it was only with the 850M drive did I have to jump in and override its suggestion.

With regard to which fs type to use, there was a review done somewhere which looked at the various fs's available in Linux and depending upon the kind of work you're liable to do, each one had different advantages. I think (IIRC) that reiserfs was better if you have lots of small files, whereas another is better for [a few] large files (eg video editing).

I'd say that the distro makers have probably chosen their default fs based on their experiences and what they expect the majority of users will do with their distro and I would guess that as a general user, your usage would probably fall into that pattern and so using their defaults will give you a good system.

I've used my old desktop computer, with Win98, for years; it only has 2g
capacity, of which I've used half; but then I deal mainly in text (essays,
poems, arguments), not graphics - and it is all those pixels which gobble up
space.

My first Win98 install had around 30G. It has since shrunk to around 23G as my linux native needs on that duel (sic) boot machine have increased. However, I also use those Win partitions as an archive data space for Linux, so it's not totally wasted.

A relative of mine has a Mac computer and uses Photoshop (?) to touch up
old photos. I think his disk has 200g, which is probably about right - lets
him store photos on his hard disk.

If you're doing photo work you need lots of storage space.

If I buy another desktop computer, I might try and load Linux, but, at the
moment, WinXP on my Notebook does all I need.

Getting Win XP to play ball with duel (sic) booting is a headache. It took a bit of sneakiness on my behalf to get it to use the partitioning scheme I wanted - NOT a single root partition, especially when trying to share that partition across my LAN (to aid transferance of data from a WIn 98 machine) gives a warning that it's an insecure, stupid thing to do and could lead to machine compromise (or words to that effect): if they know it's a stupid thing to do, WHY install (with no [obvious] user choice) to a SINGLE ROOT partition? Does the left hand of MS not know what the right's doing? [Even now I haven't fully managed to get the Documents and Settings off the root partition onto my preferred, data, partition - and Windwos is supposed to be easy.]

.

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