This isn’t always the case. Slackware doesn’t have an ‘official’ package manager, and people have been using it for about as long as there have been distros (it was the third distro in the world, after Yggdrasil and SLS, and is the oldest still actively maintained). People, me among them, use Slackware because it is very simple and comes with great documentation and the full sources to the unmodified kernel it is built around. (Red Hat typically customizes the Fedora kernels, making it more difficult to upgrade them without downloading a whole kit. This only makes a lick of difference if you intend to upgrade your kernel, which is certainly not required of anyone.)
You assume correctly.
Well, I’m using Mandriva, and given all the “fun” I had in getting my TV Tuner card up and running, I think I’ll stick with it (seeing as how I had to do similar operations in Knoppix). No idea if it’s got a package manager or not.
Mandriva’s package manager is urpmi. Here is a (potentially) useful website: Easy urpmi
Ah, I kinda thought that winmodems were standardized (like ATAPI CD drives). Now that I think more about it, that’s just dumb though, as the whole point of a winmodem was to offload hardware functionality to software to save cost. And of course, software is rarely standardized.
Oh, no, that’s not what I was suggesting. It was clear in my head; evidently it didn’t get written down that way. Assuming duffer will boot from a LiveCD, a single FAT32 partition on the second disk would be readable/writable by both Linux and Windows. For clarity, I’ll spell out the options as I see them:
[ul]
[li]Bad choice #1 – format the entire second hard disk as FAT32. While both operating systems (OSs) could read/write, there’d be no way to install Linux to the second HD without destroying the data.[/li][li]Bad choice #2 – perform a total Linux installation, using the install partitioner to create a single FAT32 partition in addition to the standard Linux partitions, but do not install the boot-loader. This is bad because I’m not sure how easy it is to install a boot-loader after the fact. [/li][li]Bad choice #3 – create a single, relatively small FAT32 partition on the second hard disk. Again, both OSs could read/write, but without knowing the proper partition sizes, it might be the case that the partitioning scheme would interfere with a later installation attempt.[/li][li]Good choice – install a full Linux system, probably Ubuntu, and dual-boot.[/li][/ul]
I consider the last to be a good choice because I don’t do Windows. 
Of the bad choices, I’d think that #3 is the best; leave 20-40GB of blank space at the front of the drive for a later Linux install and make the rest a FAT32 partition. I’m not aware of any problems this would cause; it’s similar to what my wife did on her iBook, leaving 40GB blank space in the middle of the drive for me to put Linux on later (the last third of the drive was a partition she uses to separate data she needs to share with a Windows machine). Did I miss any possibilities?
Oh, and duffer – if you don’t want to do a whole-hog Linux install, I think your LiveCD will have the gparted partitioning software available on it, which is a graphical partitioning tool much like Partition Magic.
On preview, Derleth, I must say that I left out Slackware due to my ignorance. I never did get around to giving it a try…sometime in the future, perhaps. But I’m pretty happy with Debian, so it would only be for my own edification. And you bring up another reason I dislike RedHat – they seem to monkey around with the system structure to the point that things don’t work the way I think they should.
I’ll never get upset about learning new things in as much detail as I can. Have at it! 
A couple of things:
- Linux isn’t difficult. Trust me. I am what my fiancee calls a “n00b” and I have been running linux (almost) exclusively for 6 months or so.
- All you need is 1 partition. Linux will partition that partition in the install into your swap and everything.
- Also, the boot loader comes with the install, but, and heed this very carefully, the boot loader LILO (used in some linux distros, including Red Hat) will NOT BOOT off of a second partition (in some distros it will give you a choice of where you want to put the boot loader, it’s never a good idea to put it on your second anyway).
orangetruck’s advice was very sound. You do want a distro with apt (I have no idea how I survived without it), although it isn’t the end of the world.
Most installers should format it as ext3 anyway, but damn, now I realise what the problem with my second hard drive is. :smack: I can only write to it in root because it can only be mounted by root therefore is owned by root. I made it FAT32 so that both my OS’s could write to and read from it (a handy feature when I was transferring files across the OS’es) but now I might change that.
And while we’re listing off our flavour of choice, I am currently using kubuntu (KDE ubuntu). I am however thinking about switching back to Red Hat.
Desktop environment might also influence your choice with choosing a distro. I prefer KDE. To me, it has more of a home PC feel than the workstation look Gnome has going. I also prefer some KDE applications to their Gnome counterparts (konversation, amaroK, Kontact, kopete) Althought Gnome and KDE apps can work under either environment in certain cases, although I am not sure what those cases are.
I hope that made sense Linux is awesome, thank you for choosing the world of open source.
I did this once. Before you do anything like reformatting the disk/partition, you could modify the owner of the files and your mount options for that partition. Having been (indirectly) warned by Derleth about recommending changes to the fstab file in another thread, I’ll leave it to you to read up on chown, fstab, and mount and start a new GQ thread if you have any questions.
It’s not difficult, but a mistake could lead to catastrophic data loss, so you should have some familiarity with the process.
I tried that. It’s a permissions problem. I thought it was a problem with the distro but now i think it might be a FAT32 problem. I forget what actually happened,
I think when I mounted it as root and gave myself permissions (via fstab), it wouldn’t work. I was so befuzzled. But if FAT32 can’t have file permissions, then this makes sense.
It’s not FAT32, at least not the way I think you’re understanding it. FAT32 doesn’t contain the notion of file permissions as Linux sees them, true. That is, separation of user, group, and world permissions. It does, however, have the notion of permissions; just a single set of read/write/execute (anyone know what Linux does with the “hidden” attribute?). Linux requires them; as a hack, it interprets every file on a FAT32 partition as having the same owner and group (and I forget what the permission set is, probably world-accessible, e.g., -rw-rw-rw). If you go to the top level directory and recursively change the owner and group (that is, use the “-R” switch with the chown command), the owner will be able to read/write/execute the files. You then need to change the fstab file so that when the partition is mounted, the “new” owner has access. For information as to what groups a particular user belongs, look at the “/etc/group” file.
To be clear, there are two parts to this: (1) All files need to have the non-root owner and (2) that non-root owner must be specified in the fstab file (for this to work at system startup, although you could unmount the partition and then remount it properly later). In case permissions are an issue (in the sense of user vs. group vs. world), look into the chmod command.
To make this mention of chmod of some use to duffer, the chmod command is important if you’re going to download executables (e.g., a flashplayer installer). By default, Linux does not give downloaded files executable permission. This can be frustrating for those unfamiliar with Linux, as you need to change permissions before you can execute the program. However, it is a really, really, really good thing, in that malicious code (i.e., worms and/or viruses) cannot execute without the user explicitly allowing it. One reason Linux is more secure than Windows (at least, older versions of Windows).
At any rate, if you’re going to monkey around with recursive commands, please make sure you do it from the proper current working directory. It would be a bad thing to recursively change owner/group on the wrong directory tree.
There’s a lot of good advice here, which seems to fall into two camps: partitioning or allocating the drives and doing a multi-boot on one hand, or live CDs on the other.
The third option was mentioned in passing, but may have been prematurely dismissed: VMWare. This little toy is popular amongst folks who routinely have to run isolated OSes on their systems, especially if they may need to install and remove several over time. VMWare isn’t like VirtualPC – it doesn’t run emulation, exactly, but rather “partitions” the system resources. The result is that the VMWare’d OS gets more-or-less native performance on the system. About the only resource you need to actively “split” with the host OS is memory, and only while the client OS is running. It costs about $200 for a license, which is the downside.
So to recap:
-
Dual or Multi-boot: Pros: native performance, “real” use of the machine. Cons: relatively hard to setup/undo, some chance of losing data if you make mistakes in setup, “hard” partitioning of disk space: everything given to Linux, used or not, isn’t available to Windows and vice versa (shared drives excepted).
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Live CD’s: Pros: trivial installation, no hard partitioning. Cons: Read-0nly boot medium has several limitations, may not be able to write to HD (depending on system), limited writable space. Probably not a good “permenant” solution.
-
VM’d Host (VMWare, not VirtualPC): Pros: native performance, risk-free installation, easily undoable if you switch distros or want to change settings. Cons: highest cost, you may need more memory on host system.
Here’s where it stands now. After talking to a couple of guys at work I downloaded and burned a LiveCD of Suse. (This was the highest recommended version)
I booted from the DVD and had it running fine. I was able to immediately see how the file structure, etc are similar to Windows in a way. (Hey, this is the first time I’ve used LinuxUnix in a GUI way. I have lots of learning to do I’m sure.) But I think I can figure it out.
Here’s the first problem. Getting online. It comes with Firefox, but when I open it I can’t connect to anything. I’m guessing I need the Eval version installed directly to the HDD? One of the guys said that when installing it, Suze will automatically reformat however much of the drive I want in Fat32. Will that help alleviate the issue? Or do I need to get into deeper settings for the cable modem to be able to use it?
Another, lesser problem, is my printer. I don’t even know where to begin to find out how to install it for use. I know there are many Linux forums but all that I’s seem is a little over my head at this point. Any forums that are gentle to n00bs?
I’ll go through the previous posts a little more closely now that some of it makes sense, but in case these haven’t been addressed, some pointers would be nice.
Thanks again all
One other thing, trying to play with either internet or printer settings (printer I think) it mentioned nothing was mounted. (I assume an HDD image from F:) but again, not sure what I should do with this option as nothing seemed to be allowed.
I’m really starting to think this will be easier if I get the Eval version and get it set up on the second HDD. I’ve been told 30 - 40 GB would be plenty for what I want to do with it and that is acceptable. I won’t use it as the primary OS yet, but would like enough functionality to eventually become comfortable enough with it to someday make it the primary.
Nothing. It doesn’t map to anything in the Unix file security model, so it is ignored.
The owner is always root, the group is always root, and the permissions are -rwxr-xr-x. That is, root can read/write/execute, people in root’s group can read and execute, and the world can read and execute. (The first dash means the sticky bit is not set, which gets into something that’s fairly arcane and now completely obsolete for files.)
Interesting. I didn’t know SuSe had a LiveCD. I take it your impressions are positive? Since I’m not familiar at all with Suse, any more help from me is going to be limited.
Slow down there. You’re mixing up a couple things. The free/eval version shouldn’t (unless they intentionally broke it in the free version) make a difference regarding getting online. And, no, you most assuredly do not have to have it installed to the hard drive to have network functionality. I’m surprised SuSe didn’t auto-configure your network card; there must be a GUI tool to do so (and googling, I came across SuSe Using DSL with Linux, which seems to cover cable modems also). The only thing I can help with here is working from the command line. And the only thing I feel comfortable telling you to do is to type ifconfig (or /sbin/ifconfig if you get a “Command not found” message), which prints out the current network configuration. Check the manpage for more (that is, type “man ifconfig” on the command line); you should have a block of information for each network device configured, most likely “lo” and “eth0”. If you only see “lo” (i.e., the “loopback” address of 127.0.0.1), your network card is not enabled. Seek the network configuration tools, or read up on ifup and ifdown.
Yuck. Printer set up is often horrible in Linux. It is one area that Windows is flat-out superior. However, the most recent printer config tools have worked fairly well for me; I think I used kprinter, which worked out fine. Again, I’m not sure it’ll be in SuSe, but they must have something.
Of course. Which is what I suspected.
As to the matter of making a FAT32 parition readable/writable by non-root users, I looked up a couple web pages. The pertinent info from this site is listed under “Non-root user access on FAT partition”. Or see section 4.2.6 of this Linux Newbie Guide.
My first post in Linux! Whoo-hoo!
After talking to a few people at work (the one’s that recommended Suse, no less) I went with Ubuntu for the ease of use and versatility to get my toes wet. It’s running from a LiveDVD and seems to be going well so far. Still need to test the printer, but that can come later. (After all, I do need to learn some of this on my own.) 
One thing I’ve noticed in all the documentation of this version is that upon install, I should be able to decide the amount of space I want to dedicate to it and leave the lion’s share to Windows format for data storage. Or not. Again, I have some learning to do. But at least now I have a fighting chance. Having the core basics of the internet, OpenOffice and (hopefully) a printer will keep me in Linux consistently enough to really get into this.
Let the fun begin, and thanks again for all past and future help I may need. I expect world domination in 4 months, 6 days and 18 minutes. You shall all hold title in my court!
Congratulations! I hope it works out even better than you expect it to.
OpenOffice has a few little quirks to it, but once I got used to them, I preferred it over Word. I’ve got both installed on my iMac, and I rarely ever use Word. (Of course, my Linux box only has OO on it.)
What brand is your printer? Some brands don’t have linux support. I have never actually used it, but this looks like a good comprehensive list of linux supported hardware: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/
There is no way in hell I was attempting to get my Canon to work under linux, so, I made sure my next printer was from Brother (who suport linux)
Conceptually, beginning a filename with a period “.” in Linux is analogous to setting the “hidden” flag, though the mapping doesn’t happen automatically.