Are there really any benefits to running Linux on a PC? I hear it is availble for free. Is it worth the price?
{{{Are there really any benefits to running Linux on a PC?
I hear it is availble for free.
Is it worth the price?}}}—elrayoX
Yes. LINUX is a mulituser, multitasking Operating System–DOS isn’t.
This is true. Visit: http://www.caldera.com/
Yes! It’s more than worth it. BTW: The full-version of Red Hat LINUX costs around $25.00 at CostCo Wholesale–worth the price as well.
–Kalél
(The Original EnigmaOne)
Common ¢ for all ages.
I have to give you a conditional yes here.
Read these warnings before you rush out and do something you’ll regret.
Linux is not an intuitive system and you need to know at least a little bit about what you’re doing to get it to run succesfully on your system.
Remember that you will at least need a separate partition on your system – or even better, a separate drive – to run Linux on; Linux and Windows don’t work well together.
Same with all your peripherals that are configured and/or designed with Windows; they don’t work so well (or at all) in a non-Windows environment.
Ditto with about, oh, 95% of your programs.
All that being said, if you can figure out how to set it up and use it . . . and find programs to run it with (more and more everyday) . . . you will be amazed at how efficient and fabulous Linux can be.
To re-use that old quote: “It’s not that Linux is unfriendly . . . it’s just picky about who its friends are.”
your humble TubaDiva
PS Why do you want to run Linux in the first place? Just curious.
Thanks TUBA, I forgot a few things there, didn’t I? I need to scan up some of my hand-outs. 
{{{Remember that you will at least need a separate partition on your system – or even better, a separate drive – to run Linux on; Linux and Windows don’t work well together.}}}—TUBADIVA
You can purchase an excellent boot manager from these folks: VCom. A boot manager allows you to have two or more Operating Systems that you can select at boot time. For example: on the primary hard drive of the system that I’m using now, I have Win95, Win98 and Caldera DOS 7.02 plus GeoWorks Ensemble 2.01 installed in separate primary partitions. When I want to do real work, I go with the Caldera DOS boot process. If, however, I just want to goof off online, I go with one of the other two. A fourth partition on the same drive is visable to any and all of the others–for use as common storage space. (I hesitate to call Win9x an Operating System because, for technical reasons, neither 95 or 98 is a true OS.)
{{{Same with all your peripherals that are configured and/or designed with Windows; they don’t work so well (or at all) in a non-Windows environment.}}}—TUBADIVA
I made the mistake of forgetting about devices that are “Designed for Windows.” They will not work with most other Operating Systems. If you use System Commander, you won’t have to give up those devices at all, just use them with the Win9x GUI.
For the latest news regarding the antitrust lawsuit against Micro$oft, check here: Lawsuit.
–Kalél
(The Original EnigmaOne)
Common ¢ for all ages.
Really? Just answered one of MY questions, then.
On the other side of my computer, waiting for me to get to it is . . . a new (second) hard drive . . . System Commander . . .and a set of Red Hat Linux 6.0.
I’ve been talking about this for a year, it’s about time I got to it.
Hopefully sometime in the next week or two it will get installed . . . wish me luck.
Anything else I should know?
your humble TubaDiva
If you can handle the partitioning yourself, Red Hat 6.0’s installer will do the rest, including installing and configuring LILO, the boot loader I use that comes free with any Linux. I’ve always used it, and never had trouble.
Go with Gnome as your window manager. It’s the best out there, though KDE is also slick enough that you won’t feel like you’re in a second-rate Win3.1/95 environment.
Enigma, why do you have Windows 95 and Windows 98 on separate partitions? That sounds like twice the trouble for half the benefit. Why don’t you give up one of those partitions to BeOS?
I should mention that if you have any trouble with Red Hat, buy five other distributions and give their installers a try. You don’t have to buy the whole kit for $30 each; go to LinuxCentral or any other reseller, and buy the distribution on repackaged CDs for $2 each (I got Red Hat 6.0 for $2.75, not the $75 that Best Buy is charging). Caldera’s installer is very slick, too.
Tuba,
I am investigating using Linux because my DOS/window 95 system is really hosed. I should explain that it is not a real win95 anymore. The ISP that was using offered a free upgrade, It is some sort of win98 beta version. anyway, as soon as I loaded it, MSExplorer tried to take over my system. I had to talk to the people at Netscape just to be able to start the Netscape browser again.
The operating system was acting semi normal for a while, but now when the computer is on for more than a few hours, no programs will run. Error messages will say that there is no room to start any programs, but there is plenty of free disk space. I can only remedy the problem by rebooting. Sometimes a message pops up that says to reinstall windows. I havent done that yet.
I definitely agree that linux isn’t for the faint of heart new user, but for a person who has a desire to learn about unix-style systems, it is a great place to start.
Linux can still be somewhat challenging to install, but if you have very common hardware (like a Soundblaster sound card for example) and your components aren’t too new, the installation should take care of itself for the most part. One challenge for linux is that hardware vendors rarely make drivers for linux, leaving linux developers to pick up the slack.
Important thing to remember if you are creating a duel boot Win/Linux system. If you make your partition(s) for Windows, and just leave some unpartitioned space for linux, the RedHat installer (and likely other brands as well), will now do all of the linux partitioning for you automatically if you want it to.
Linux is definitely not as easy to use as Win or Mac, but man, when I compare the install I did a few weeks ago to my first install in early '97, well, let’s just say there is a huge improvement. 
Hopefully it will continue to get a lot easier.
GNOME/Enlightenment is definitely a much improved GUI. I’d say it is now my favorite of any GUI on any unix system I’ve seen.
I have heard that Linux is virtually crash proof, and can be left running for long periods of time without rebooting and no errors will accumulate.
I can’t leave my win98 OS running for more than a couple of days at a stretch without the whole works going down the hopper. I come back to the machine and find it hopelessly frozen up. Even ctrl-alt-del has no effect.
I have had to reload windows twice in a little over a year, and it’s a real pain. I’m obligated to load win95 first because the win98 I have is an upgrade. Then load all the other software that I use.
I learned early on that if I didn’t start with a blank drive, I’d get heaps of errors by just installing over everything.
I’m considering trying Linux, but I’m going to add another HD to the machine to install it on. There’s plenty of room on the frame of the machine for another HD.
FixedBack
“Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.”~~G.K.Chesterton 1908
LinuxPPC and MKLinux are both available for the Mac, depending upon the vintage of your machine.
As with PCs, you’ll find that running Linux means starting from scratch as far as getting your devices available for use, and you’ll have to obtain all new application software (no, you do NOT get to run MacWrite Pro under Linux!).
Keep in mind that the upcoming versions of MacOS will also be based on Unix. This could mean that learning Unix (Linux) now means that you will be more versatile than the average Mac user when OS X is released. It will be a different flavor of Unix (OS X will be based on Berkeley Free Distribution [BSD] Unix, not Linux), but many Unix apps can easiy be ported from Linux to BSD, if not necessarily the graphical user interface of OS X.
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It is definitely much harder to crash linux (the same is generally true of unix-style systems in general). Our linux server averages 30 days between reboots and most of these reboots have been deliberate (hardware change, moving the box).
I often leave my linux workstation on for days. I’ve never needed to reboot it 'cept for deliberate maintenance and to go into Win98. Generally, when a program dies or is killed in unix-style systems, it dies a lot more cleanly that in Windows.
Of course, having a system that is very stable doesn’t help if it doesn’t have the programs you need.
Fortunately for me, most of the programs I use are internet related, and linux is fairly well covered there. Some of the programs are still less feature-complete than their Windows counterparts tho.
I got Linux running on my PC in May. I thought for a while that I was going to have to reinstall Win98 and all my games after I repartitioned, but it turned out not to be necessary.
There’s this neat little utility called FIPS that can actually split a big partition into smaller ones. Even better, it can undo the operation later. Nobody installing an additional OS should be without something like this.
I’m not a warlock.
I’m a witch with a Y chromosome.
I really appreciate all this information – y’all are definitely pushing me into getting into action here!
Let me get through this pile of pending problems on my desk and see what the week brings me. I’ll keep you all posted . . .hope I don’t have to come here crying for help, but I’m not proud. . . much.
your humble TubaDiva
PS Elrayo, too bad about your situation. That first edition of Win98 bit quite a few people. I’m not sure if the 2nd edition will solve your problems; I suspect not, but that’s because I’m distrustful of Microsoft just on general principles. Your best bet is probably to remove all you can and reinstall Win95.
I also recommend you do a little research and investigation before you get into Linux; for some people it’s a deal, for others, it’s swapping one set of problems for another.
Good luck to you.
Couldn’t help but link this joke submitted by our dear Melis.
http://fathom.org/teemingmillions/jokes/airplanes.html
I think I’ve seen this joke before, but I don’t recall seeing the linux part, which IMO is the funniest part!
For the love of Gates NOOOO!!!
I’m not going to ask you what your doing with DOS, cause I’d rather not know, but here is a short list of thing linux excels at:
Stability - I can easily write apps that bring it down, but it runs for weeks on its own.
NFS - the C: bullshit is gone. Mount and organize you crap where you please. Seamless networking.
Small - Win98se takes up 200+meg for a light install (x10 as much as win95 did). Makes you want to boot Bill in the nuts.
Cheap or free - stiff the man.
And now win98
Applications - Quicken for linux? Dreamweaver for linux? Tribes for linux? ICQ for liux? Don’t think so. You’ll have to finger your freinds and hope they dont take it the wrong way.
Hardware - if it fits in the slot theres a win98 driver for it. I have 4 components that arent supported by slackware or red hat linux.
Maintaince - go to the microsquash site and click “download and install” none of that recompiling the kernel crap.
Application stability - Your 32bit kernel or message server might go down to often for your liking, but I never used anything that coredumped as much as Netscape 4.0 for linux, Gnu xEmacs and Framemaker.
Ease of use - Click… drag… drop… ahhh.
Bill da man - He has proven he will cheat, steal and sell your mothers soul to crush all opposition and Satan is #1 on his speed dialer.
You could install both linux and windows, but the the question is why would you want to?
Now with all the ragging I’ve done on linux, I’m talking about a client machine. If your planning on running a network server you have no choice, winNT server is insanely priced and win9x will not run properly for more than 48hours if your lucky.
I largely agree with the things that falcon2 was saying, tho I still find linux very usable as a workstation for my uses (my uses are not really typical tho).
There are a myriad of ICQ clones for linux btw. I use GICQ, which is not very feature rich, but it works fine. gAIM (an AIM clone) is slightly better than, and just as feature rich as the standard AOL client.
Core dumps happen, but I’ll take a core dump over a GPF any day.