1) Dual booting with Win 98 shouldn't present much of a problem. It's been awhile, and I was using Mandrake at the time, but 'Drake's installer had the option to automatically resize the Win 9x parts if you wanted them. Red's installer probably isn't too different. I would suggest using GRUB for the boot loader. GRUB will allow easy selection of what you want to boot. See:
Red Hat Manuals and:
Linux Documentation Project (click on "HOWTOs") For more information.
Secondly, before you begin installing Red, first make sure that you run both "scandisk" -- the complete scan, not just that quickie one Windoze runs when rebooting after a crash -- best done by starting scandisk from the DOS command line. Without Winderz running, it goes a helluva lot faster. Next, see the feature article right here:
Microsoft's Really Hidden Files. You can recover many tens, if not 100 or more MB of HD space, more for Linux. Once that's done, run defrag. This
must be done from within Windows. If you attempt it from the DOS prompt, you'll lose all the long file names. Bummer.
2) Programming in Linux is quite different than doing it in Winderz, using something like Visual C++. Get ready to really learn programming. Every Linux distro I've ever heard of already comes with GCC. This provides your C, C++, and FORTRAN 77 compilers and linkers. GCC is a command line app, so you'll have to spend some time with the man pages and the info pages to get familiar with it. See the Linux Documentation Project for a GCC HOWTO. Definitely download
The Official Autobook. This is an excellent manual all about: autoconf, automake, and make. You'll definitely need these if you're going to do any serious Linux programming. It won't be an easy read, so give it the time and attention it deserves.
There are also some very good programming aids for Linux: Qt Designer -- An IDE app quite similar to Borland's C++Builder, and KDevelop (both come with the KDE desktop). There's Glade, the GNOME equivalent of KDevelop and Qt Designer. There's also Anjuta, a C++ programming aid for writing console apps, or for use with GUI libraries, such as FOX, that don't come with GUI designers. Some of these also take care of managing your make and configure files for you.
And that's just for C and C++. There are also the scripting languages: Perl, Python, and Ruby. You can also get graphical libraries for these as well (FOX makes FXPy, and also a ruby version). Beats the
HELL out of VB scripts
Also, get yourself familiar with Vim and/or EMACS: these are the best Linux editors for writing code. Both include extensive tutorials on running them.
That ought to be enough to get you started. You can always find some good links at these web sites. And, remember, Google is your friend.
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Live Free or Die: Linux
Their fundamental design flaws are completely concealed by their superficial design flaws
[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]
