my name says it all please help me

[eaeshamdevil]

i've had enough of it, i want to switch to a 'distro' of linux, but sadly for me, you alltalk of the operating systems themselves and why microsoft sucks, and never get around to explaining how to actually isntal and initiate the operating system, so please in a short manner explain what i need to do, i have a computer that i can experiment on, i want to use a distro of linux . please gimme links and stuff and critizize me plz but explain what i need to do and what kind of work i need to do if i want to use my new linux comp for internet surfing and music and some games, thank you for reading this and for hopefully responding

[Stryker]

quote:i've had enough of it, i want to switch to a 'distro' of linux, but sadly for me, you alltalk of the operating systems themselves and why microsoft sucks, and never get around to explaining how to actually isntal and initiate the operating system

my attempt to translate that would be, "you guys dont teach me how to install an operating sytem enough, tell me again?"

sorry, i would explain it but someone else will do it better. that's what a lot of the posts are about is explaining things to people, including installing linux. which in my opinion is just as simple as windows, stick in the cd and restart.

 

quote:
... so please in a short manner explain what i need to do, i have a computer that i can experiment on, i want to use a distro of linux . please gimme links and stuff and critizize me plz but explain what i need to do and what kind of work i need to do if i want to use my new linux comp for internet surfing and music and some games, thank you for reading this and for hopefully responding

personally, i dont think anybody actually needs to hold ur hand through it. just try it once, stick in a linux cd and reboot.

i'm sure someone here will go through a long explaination, but i'm in too bad of a mood. nothing personal, just a bad day.

[st1d]

Here are some sites, but don't expect them to step you through every option.  Installation isn't that hard, but it's not something anyone does without some reading up.  Otherwise, everybody would buy a cheapy computer without an OS, and then install whichever one they liked, and MS would be out of business back in 1998-99

www.linuxquestions.org
www.tldp.org
www.linux.org
www.linuxtoday.com  (news, but still nice to read)
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/

[eaeshamdevil]

http://www.belg88.com/faqman/index.php?op=view&t=73
it's in the f a q , says download it and put it onto  a disk, i did that, and inserteted it into my cd rom drive, rebooted several times and nothing happens, as if the disk isn't even in there. i dl'd the knopix distro , to my desktop, then wrote it to a c d. it said it would boot as the distro, but no dice. please help me out i am stupid but i just need a lil' help

[skyman8081]

sounds like a BIOS issue.

you BIOS is booting the Hard drive before the CD-Rom

during the boot sequence, you will have to manually enter into the boot-device menu (usually triggered by the F8 key) and select CD-ROM and boot from there.

[TheQuirk]

Aye. He is correct. But... Could you, uh, change your displayed name?

It's a bit, err, long.

[Copperhead]

You also have to make sure that you are correctly burning *.iso images to a disk.  www.linuxiso.org has some HOWTOs of how to do this with some of the more popular burning utilities for Window$:

http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html
 
Once you burn the CD correctly, make sure you have your BIOS set to boot from CD before Harddrive, like root@localhost said (If you have never messed around with your BIOS before, you are most likely using factory default settings which, more than likely, boot from the harddrive first. You will need to change that. Depending on your BIOS, this is usually one of the F keys ((F7 F2, etc. or the DEL key.)))

If you are using Knoppix, you have a full Linux system (a very adept one), right at your disposal. Plus, you didn't make even one change to your harddrive.  Naturally, the "Live" CDs run considerabley slower than an installed system. You do, however, have the option of installing Knoppix right to the harddrive, if you so desire. I like Knoppix. To serve a desktop system, you couldn't really ask for anything more. You get a fully working Debian-based distro that gives you APT, and it is A LOT easier to get rolling than an official Debian release.

To start you off, I found this tutorial to be informative, interesting, and well organized:

http://www.linux-tutorial.info/cgi-bin/display.pl?224&0&0&0&3

If you want to give the Knoppix harddrive install a try, Creedon ( a guy that used to post here ) wrote a tutorial:

http://www.linuxjunior.org/cgi-bin/pet/pet.cgi?SUBMIT=Display&id=82

If you have other questions, especially those that are initially confusing to a newbie (like partitioning and Linux device names), feel free to ask. The "help me install" topic is just too broad. You have to break it down, piece-by-piece, and let us know what is troublesome to you.  

[eaeshamdevil]

thank you all for helping me , so much i appreciate it, my xp gets slower and slower by the minute.... billy bill know's wats up eh? as i speak im using nero to try burning the knoppix iso again, maybe i didn't do it right last time. also i'm gonna fuck around with bios now and tell it to boot from  c d instead of booting from disk. can i partition half the HD so i can half linux running 1 side and y'nknow xp on the other. is that possible? if so please please tell me how to - and is all this bios-fucking-around-with going to be reversible?

[insomnia]

quote:Originally posted by foolishpersonwhoknowsnothing:
can i partition half the HD so i can half linux running 1 side and y'nknow xp on the other. is that possible?

Knoppix doesn't need a hard drive (...well you can, but that's buggy and difficult...).
For a full (and easy) system, downlaod Redhat9.0 or Mandrake 9.1 (3cd's).

[eaeshamdevil]

it.......mnever ....ends..... right now im on my shitty xp computer, i put knopix on my win 98 computer in the other room, and like somebody said, it's alot slower when being read from the cd rom drive, and said it was be alot faster if a partition HD install was done. alright redhat 9.0 , can you please give me a link? thanks for your input, if i could just get a link for the dl . and by the way- are there any specific system requirements for knoppix/and/or redhat?

[blackphiber]

ok here is the list of mirrors for Red Hat its pretty self expanitory: red hat

here is for
mandrake

good luck, oh and if you still cant get it contact your local lug, they might have an install fest where they install it for you. lugs

[skyman8081]

which computer are you doing this to.
Windows Internet Explorer 4 (98)?
or XP?

98 will be alot easier to do this with than XP.

step 1. backup everything
step 2. burn the iso(s) of your choicce (I suggest mandrake 9.1)
step 3. Verify the md5's
step 4. boot the CD's
step 5. let it configure your hardware
step 6. when you get to the partitioning screen. manually partition it.
step 7. resize the windows partition (FAT32 if 98, NTFS is 2K/XP (red hat can't resize NTFS, mandrake can))
step 8. add an ext3 partition mounted at / leaving 1 gigabyte as space
step 9. add a 1 gig. swap partition
step 10. choose your bootloader
step 11. select what you wan't to install & install it
step 12. enjoy!

those are the 12 steps for setting up a dual boot.

[eaeshamdevil]

oh alright, im doing this on a 98 first- if it works im doing it on my xp - both computers are seriously diving in performance- are there any system requirements for mandrake 9 1 like you reccomeneded? the blackout surges burnt half of my ram to make matters worse so im gonna have a hard time burning all these iso's. and is mandrake 9 1 very user friendly like knopix?

[eaeshamdevil]

i looked at the mandrake link one of you guys posted,. i feel stpuid asking but do i download the i586? or ppc or what i dont understand what that means. im going to install this on a intel win 98 comp 533 mhz, could somone tell me which one i dl?

[eaeshamdevil]

alright this is my 3rd straight post , sorry for spamming but i need som'ore help. i went to the mandrake link which had more link's the dl places. im confused , it's not really giving me an ISO to download for mandrake, instead it's many many smaller files. can you plllllleeeeaase explain this to me !