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.
You really need another partition thats 32Mb or 64Mb for a 'swap'
partition. Linux will use that as additional 'memory' in addition
to the physical ram your machine has. Its functionally equivalent
to the swap file that Win creates except that a separate partition
is safer than a file on your main partition.
> I am trying to work out ... is it possible to share files between the two
> operating systems (i.e. Linux and W95) ?
No problem. There is a filesystem for Linux called 'msdos' or
'vfat' (for Win95) that can be installed as part of a customized
kernel or as a kernel module. These filesystems once mounted
(probably in /etc/fstab) allow read/write access to your Win
partition.
> 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 ??
>
> (Is a BMP in Linux the same format as a BMP file in W95 ?)
Binary files are copied unaltered. What you are probably
thinking of is the CR/LF difference between Unix and Dos/Win when
it comes to text files. Dos uses ascii 13/10 (CR/LF) to end lines
in a text file, while Unix just uses the 10 (LF).
> ...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. ?
Sure, but it my take a little learning at first (was for me).
Once I got ppp (use pppconfig deb package) running (connected to
my ISP), I just got Netscape Communicator from
ftp://ftp.netscape.com and installed it. You can learn how the
other, standard Unix, packages are installed and configured (you
need a mail transfer agent, a mail user agent, and newsgroup
reader) but these are really only needed if your planning on
setting your machine up as a server. For end-user only type of
activity (web surfing) just get Netscape. Note: Netscape is
available in Debian 2.1 as deb files, otherwise make sure you get
the glibc2 version from ftp.netscape.com (under the 'unsupported'
dir tree).
>
> 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 :)
>
> Thanks in advance for your help !!
>
> regards,
> Andrew J Fortune
--
Ed C.
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