Re: Re: Experiment: Neophyte versus Windows XP
On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 17:46, Mark e Plummer wrote:
> Hello,
> I have just read your article as best I could. I am confused, but not
> by you but by me.
> I have been using Firefox as a browser and Thunderbird as mailbox for
> about a week and a half now and I love them.
> I am thinking about dumping Windows XP because it is a pain, I was
> looking at Mandrake and ReHat. Debian Woody I have never heard off
> until five minutes ago.
> Is it really hard to understand. Or as I am not a programmer should I
> even be thinking about using it.
> This is a vague letter I know.
> What I am asking, I suppose, is would you go for it. Do I have to dump
> Windows before I start downloading Woody?
> Any help in the form of ideas would be wonderful.
Hi Mark,
You should definitely give Linux a go - it's got some great features,
and gets better by the day.
Provided you have a reasonable-size hard drive, you can have multiple
operating systems installed on the same PC by "partitioning" your disk
drive. Or if you're short of disk space, you can always buy another disk
drive to experiment with.
It is probably better to do this than simply wipe Windows; like all
drugs, going cold-turkey can be hard :-).
With multiple operating systems installed (often called "dual boot" or
"multi-boot"), when you turn your PC on you get a list of the installed
operating systems to choose from, including your existing Windows setup.
There are even Linux versions that run direct from CD without needing to
be installed at all, but that is probably not what you're looking for.
If you've got Windows 95/98/ME right now, then you can simply run a
"disk defragmentation" from inside Windows, then boot from a linux
install CD and follow the instructions to split off some spare disk
space for the use of Linux. If you've got WindowsNT, 2000 or XP, you'll
probably need the commercial tool "partition magic" to create a
partition on your existing drive. Or buy that new drive I suggested.
There may be a way to partition your existing windows drive with free
software, but someone else will have to tell you how, because I don't
know of a safe way to do this.
And best of all, if you keep your existing windows files around you can
access them from Linux. Not your old emails, unfortunately (Microsoft
makes that very difficult), but certainly your MS-Word documents, your
photos, your mp3 music files, etc.
About 6 GBytes is a good amount to use for a linux install. Of course if
you can spare more, then that is good - you'll need somewhere to put
your music and photo collections ;-).
Regarding which linux distribution to install, both Mandrake and RedHat
are good choices. Debian is a little harder to use initially, but more
powerful once you get to know it. As your first entry into Linux, you
might be better off with Mandrake or "Fedora" (what RedHat call their
free version). But Debian is ok to start with, too. The "woody" (3.0)
version you mentioned, though, is pretty old. If you choose Debian, you
will probably be better off downloading the "debian-installer" program
from http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/. This is "beta"
software, ie not officially released, but it's a lot easier to use than
the "woody" (aka 3.0) release of Debian. This will install everything
over the internet, so you only need to make one CD. However you'd better
have a good internet connection...
I suggest you use "google" to search for articles about installing and
learning linux. You should find plenty of information there.
Regards,
Simon
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