Re: Some Newbie Questions
Andrew J Fortune wrote:
>
> I am a Windows 95 user who has recently been introduced to the world of
> Linux (Debian (2.0, I think ??)). I have partitioned off about 1 GB of my
> hard drive to Linux, and the rest is DOS/W95.
As someone else mentioned, you'll need to use part of that as a swap
partition, but only a little bit (32 or 64 MB is usually a good size).
> I am trying to work out ... is it possible to share files between the two
> operating systems (i.e. Linux and W95) ?
Yes; with the default kernel (or one you compile yourself (you won't try
this for a few weeks probably)), Linux can access DOS/Windows
partitions. Eventually you'll set your system up to automatically mount
the DOS partition, but for now, you can do it manually.
As root (aka super-user), make sure you have an empty directory, for
example, /Win95. Then use the command "mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /Win95".
This assumes your Windows partition is Win95-style (ie long filenames);
if just regular DOS-formatted, it'd be "mount -t dos .... " (the "-t"
means "type"). This command also assumes your Windows partition is on
the first partition on the first IDE drive (/dev/hda1). Then you can cd
(change directory, just like in DOS) to /Win95/windows and give a
command such as "rm *", which would remove all the files (but not
subdirectories) in the /Win95/windows directory (you DO want to delete
your windows files, right? :-) snicker-snicker).
> Here is a practical example of what I mean.....I am trying to sell the
> concept of Linux to a friend of mine who only uses W95 at the moment.
> Suppose I wanted to create a screenshot (.BMP) from a session that I was
> running in WMaker or Afterstep....how would I get it across to W95 so that I
> could EMail the picture to him ??
Once you have your windows partition mounted as per the above
instructions, you'd just copy the file like in DOS, such as "cp
/home/mydirectory/mypicture.bmp /Win95/bmpfiles".
> (Is a BMP in Linux the same format as a BMP file in W95 ?)
'Fraid I can't speak to this....
> ...and talking about EMails, can anyone give me any leads on the best way I
> can connect to the Net in Linux, surf the Net, send/receive EMails,
> participate in Chat programs etc. ?
As part of the default Debian install, I THINK ppp is installed. Just
run (as root) the command "pppconfig" and answer the questions as best
you can. This will create two configuration files
("/etc/ppp/peers/provider" and /etc/chatscripts/provider) that contain
the phone number, username, etc for dialing into your ISP. If you're on
a LAN, that's another story.
Once you've run pppconfig, you can run "pon" to connect to your ISP, and
"poff" to disconnect. Once connected, you can probably use telnet, ftp,
and lynx (lynx is a text-only web-browser). What you'd probably want to
do is ftp to ftp.netscape.com and download one of the latest
Communicators to the /tmp directory (if you don't know how to
ftp/download, holler). Then run dselect and install the netscape4
package, which is just an installer for the Netscape Communicator
program (licensing issues...)). This will install Netscape Communicator
for you, and then you can run Netscape and things will look quite
familiar to you.
> I'm experienced in W95, but I am only starting out in the world of Unix
> (...a whole new world), so if any responses could be in layman's terms I
> would be grateful :)
When I started with Linux, I budgeted a year to allow myself to become
familiar enough with it to be comfortable. I'm now at about the 9-month
mark, and it looks like I budgeted just about right. I only mention this
to let you know that you may have a lot of rough spots ahead, but stick
with it and you'll find that you really like it after you get past the
wobbly-legs stage.
> Thanks in advance for your help !!
>
> regards,
> Andrew J Fortune
>
> --
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