Re: I want to migrate to Linux

General Schvantzkopf <schvantzkopf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:CpmdnbRc9NJPO1nanZ2dnUVZ_obinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:13:38 +0000, pcbldrNinetyEight wrote:

General Schvantzkopf <schvantzkopf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:Cpmdnbtc9NLUF1nanZ2dnUVZ_obinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:55:56 +0000, pcbldrNinetyEight wrote:

I want to migrate from WIN98SE to Linux and am looking for advise.

I recently built two Identical WIN98SE PCs. Even though I expect
these machines to last many years I know someday they will wear out
and WIN98SE compatible hardware will not be available. I have no
intention of ever buying MS OS again so I must take action so I can
continue building and using PCs in the future.

One PC will serve as a test machine and the other will be my
primary PC. My plan is to start by booting from a LiveCD, then
install Linux in a dual boot with WIN98SE, then install just Linux.
If I am successful I will abandon WIN98SE on both machines.

My priorities in order of importance are: Support for my hardware.
(I omitted a list for brevity in this first post but will supply if
you are interested) Support for WINE so I may continue to use my
current software for which there are no Linux alternatives.

I need to get this OS up and running quickly with little previous
knowledge. Until I have time to learn the syntax of Linux I need to
pick a distro that supports point and click as much as possible. I
have told my wife that she too is migrating to Linux and she also
needs a point and click OS.

I am considering the following distros and given my goals I would
appreciate your input and or additional suggestions: PCLinuxOS
Ubantu

I chose this NG to post because it looks fairly active. If there is
a better NG for my questions then please advise. Thank you for your
help.

If you are on dialup you will want a stable distro. You have
probably figured out that there are a lot distros available and they
all have different objectives. Some distros aim to be up to the
minute while others are targeted at people who want a distro that
will be supported for a very long time and which requires the least
amount of work to maintain it, these types of distros are called
"stable". From a users point of view a stable distro will tend to
have fewer features and it's components will be older and have fewer
features. However they also have very many fewer updates than the
cutting edge distros. In the Redhat family the cutting edge distro
is Fedora, the stable distro is Redhat Enterprise Linux. Fedora
generally has hundreds of megabytes of updates a week, RHEL has 1 or
2 megabytes per week. The reason that the update burden is so low on
RHEL is that it only provides bug fixes and security patches, there
are no new features or improvements as there are on Fedora. The free
version of Redhat EL is called CentOS. The latest version of CentOS
is 5.1. I recommend that you give CentOS 5.1 a try. In the Ubuntu
family the stable version is designated by the extension LTS. The
latest leading edge Ubuntu is 7.10, the latest LTS version is 6.06
LTS. In both the CentOS and Ubuntu LTS cases the distros are vintage
2006. I get the impression that you aren't using leading edge
hardware so the age of these distros shouldn't be a problem for you.

You guess right. I don't own, can't afford cutting edge hardware plus
I value reliability over performance.

The advantage is that you will be able to update them using dialup
because they have so many fewer updates.

Excellent.

Actually I'm
making an assumption that Ubuntu LTS is like CentOS because I'm a
Fedora and CentOS user, I play with Ubuntu but I don't like it so I
don't use it regularly. I can say with certainty that you will be
able to do CentOS updates without a problem with CentOS 5.1.

I will add those distros to my list. Thanks.

Please post the specs for your machines. If you don't have a lot of
RAM you will want to be looking at a lighter weight distro, Xubuntu
for example. If you have 1G then you can run anything, 512M will run a
Gnome system but you'll probably want to limit the number of
applications that you have open at any one time. You can even run a
Gnome system in as little as 384M but it's not particularly pleasant.
Xubuntu uses a lighter weight window manager so it runs better on low
spec machines. It won't be quite as user friendly as Ubuntu, but it's
probably better than Win98.


Biostar NF325-A7
http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=nf325-a7

Sempron 3100+ 64bit

Patriot 512MB DDR 400, PC 3200 (one DIMM installed in each machine)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220027

Seagate Barracuda ST380215A 80GB IDE HD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148236

ZOGIS GeForce FX 5500, 256MB DDR, 128-bit, AGP 8X, VGA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131014

Sony DVD AW-Q170A
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/SearchDetail.asp?productID=12666

IN WIN IW-J619T2.J350L+ Beige Mid Tower 350W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108056

For the first of my twin PCs I built in November '07 I initally bought two
Kingston DIMM from Newegg. One was bad and one was good. I returned the bad
and they sent me bad in return. At that point I gave up. When I built the
second PC in January I installed one Patriot 512MB DIMM.

WIN98SE will not run with more than 512MB installed. I have a plan to
modify it to accept 1GB but I haven't tried yet.

I don't usually have more than about six apps open simultaneously. I can
easily up both machines to 1GB each if this will improve Linux performance.
If I dual boot I will be required to make WIN98SE accept 1GB of ram but
that should be possible.

I will reply to your other post later today with a list of apps for which I
seek Linux equivalents. Thank you for your help.

--
pcbldrNinetyEight
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: I want to migrate to Linux
    ... WIN98SE compatible hardware will not be available. ... successful I will abandon WIN98SE on both machines. ... I am considering the following distros and given my goals I would ... The free version of Redhat EL is called CentOS. ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
  • Re: I want to migrate to Linux
    ... WIN98SE compatible hardware will not be available. ... I am considering the following distros and given my goals I would ... very many fewer updates than the cutting edge distros. ... The free version of Redhat EL is called CentOS. ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
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    ... I recently built two Identical WIN98SE PCs. ... My plan is to start by booting from a LiveCD, then install Linux ... I am considering the following distros and given my goals I would ... The free version of Redhat EL is called CentOS. ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
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