Re: newbie, wanting to switch from Windows...
From: Geoffrey Firman (HojoMeno_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 04/04/04
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Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 19:07:21 GMT
On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 09:59:14 -0400, "Rick Kline" <ekline51@ptd.net>
wrote:
>My granddaughter is living with me, and she has an AST Bravo MS 5233M Model
>3000C/95. The unit has a Pentium 266MHz with 120MB RAM. It came with Win95,
>and over time we upgraded to Win98 & later on went to WinMe. The unit
>adapted WELL to the upgrades. Having said all of that, here are my
>questions...
FWIW, I think Win ME is the worst OS MS ever put on the market, and
that's saying something. I can understand your desire for something
more stable. At the risk of sounding heretical, I will point out that
Win XP, buggy as it is, is a lot more stable than any other windows
product I've ever tried.
>A few of my friends are busting up on me, trying to teach an old dog (53 in
>2 weeks) new tricks. They insist that Linux is the way to go, running faster
>& more stable than Windows, without most of the virus concerns. But I would
>need one that is EASY on a "newbie" old man..., like easy installing (I
>would rather that it configures itself, instead of ME having to make choices
>that I don't have a clue WHAT I'm doing...),
You should keep a few things in mind:
1- The more standard your hardware, the easier time you'll have
installing Linux. A laptop is probably not the best way to start
fooling around with any distro. The fact that you can't boot from the
CD is a perfect example of the sort of thing your setting yourself up
for. Check out the hcl (hardware compatibility list) to get an idea of
what you're up against.
2- Are you prepared to wipe the laptop's HD clean? Otherwise you
should consider a dual boot system. To do that you're going to need to
create separate HD partitions (at least three). One to keep the
original Windows OS (which has to include sector one of the HD), one
for the Linux OS and one for a swap partition. This can be confusing.
If you're used to windows, you might find Partition Magic easier to
use to create these partitions. I would also avoid installing a
bootloader to the harddrive, as you can mess up your windows bootup if
something goes wrong. I always found a boot floppy to be the safest
way to create a dual boot system.
3- The most painless installation I've ever seen was with Knoppix
(which I'm currently using. I installed it to my harddrive.) Mandrake
10, by comparison, did a terrible job recognizing my hardware, and I
have very standard stuff. It failed to recognize my Radeon ATI vid
card, loaded the wrong driver for my Soundblaster sound card and
totally screwed up the installation of my Realtek ethernet card. I
realize choosing a distro can be very confusing. I can only emphasize
that the more research you do, the better off you'll be. One of
Linux's greatest strengths is its configurability, but more choices
comes with a price. You have to know how to best take advantage of all
the options available to you.
Good luck.
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