Linux Operating System

[Peter Stahl]

Anyone using Linux? Any particular place to get it from? I want to put it on it's own harddrive, can I have dual operating systems this way? Have a old pentium II that I thought I'd try it out on.

[Alex Berkovsky]

I just installed Ubuntu on my old PC and so far liking it. You can also run it from a live CD to see if you like it prior to installing it.
edit: I think Vector will run faster on a Pentium II machine. I hope Linux experts will add more to this topic.

[Phil Sanders]

Peter:

A bit of background: Linux is actually a small part of the core of the operating systems most call Linux. What most people call Linux is broken down into distributions, or Distro's. There are a little over 100 Distros. Popular are Ubunto, Fedor, FreeBSD, and some others.

Aside: you will come across the term BSD, that stands for Berkley Software Development, out of U of Cal- Berkley. This is the brain trust theory people who work on the core of UNIX, Linux, and all the deep background stuff.

The following site lists the distros, sites to download, and some links on where to get a review of the distros. Spend a long rainy Saturday here.
http://distrowatch.com/

There are several competing open sourced modules for just about everything else in Linux. For example there is KDE, X-windows, and a few others for you to select as far as the Graphical User Interface (GUI) module you want to use. (I like KDE the best.) There are 4 browsers (Foxfire being the best), two firewall IP Sec modules and so forth for you to choose to make active. The problem is selecting the modules you want to install. You are not in Microsoft's world, just trust me on this.

Now for an example: Last fall, on an old P-III, I downloaded Fedora Core version 6 (renamed from old Red-hat desktop OS). Since I installed Fedora Core, Linux Core had a minor update, that called for an update to Fedora, and then over the next few weeks, I kept having this or that stop working until a module is updated for the new Linux / Fedora updates. Since most of the modules are maintained by volunteers, well, there is a time delay for the volunteers to get at it. It all got back working about 2 months later.

A few of the Distros are fully contained in a CD, and you can boot to the CD and never touch your hard drive and they let you see what a Linux system is like. No frills, and a simple GUI interface plus browser.

One Distro, Debian, is something like 15 CD's. You select the modules you want to install, and usually it takes only 4 or 5 CD's to install. HOWEVER, make note, it will install only the modules you ask for plus the core Linux. So, how do the newbie learn which modules are needed? Hmm-mm? I still haven't figured that out. Darn good Distro, but Debian is pretty much just for the senior expert in Linux command line interface (CLI) commands.

HTH:
Phil

[Roger Fitzsimonds]

Peter
Do a google search for linux iso. If you can burn cdroms. Umbutu is a real easy install and has all the drivers that I have ever needed. good luck.

Roger

[Hans Loeblich]

I also use Ubuntu. It seems to be one of the more user-friendly disstributions with relatively simple install process. You can set up your computer to have dual(or more) operating systems. This is generally referred to as a "dual boot" configuration. If you google for that, you should be able to find out everything you need and more. Both my home computers can dual boot to windows and linux(though I can't recall the last time I did boot windows).

I haven't tried it on old hardware like a pentium II, but it might be a bit sluggish for that. There are variants of Ubuntu that use different window managers(default is Gnome). Xubuntu for example uses Xfce, which is supposed to be a lightweight window manager that should run better on old hardware.

The forums at http://ubuntuforums.org are a great place to learn more. The people there are generally very firendly and helpful.

[Chris Friesen]

Just thought I'd correct one minor issue in Phil's post. Ubuntu and Fedora (note the spelling) are likely the two best options for people just starting out.

FreeBSD is a version of BSD, which is something else entirely from Linux although they do share some similarities.

The standard versions of both Ubuntu and Fedora would likely be a bit slow on your PII, but it wouldn't hurt to try it out from a live CD (just stick it in the drive and reboot). As others have mentioned, Xubuntu is probably a decent place to start.

[Ian Abraham]

I've been playing with Novell's Suse distribution.

You can download it from here http://en.opensuse.org/Download for free (it's a BIG download though)

The setup utility seems to work really sweet, has online updating and all the software you need to get a usefull working PC setup. (Email, web browser, Open Office, games etc)

Cheers

Ian

[Phil Sanders]

Chris:

Thanks for keeping me honest. You are correct.

Phil

[Matt Meiser]

I recently built a file server for home using Ubuntu. It is pretty straight forward, but then I've been working in the IT field for 10 years. As someone else said, you can burn a CD that you can boot off of to try it out. That even worked on my laptop.

[Monte Milanuk]

I used to *live* in Linux (well, it seemed like it). After a while, I got to where I just wanted my desktop to be, well, like a toaster. Turn it on, do what I want, not have to worry about whether drivers are available (or have been reverse engineered) yet, whether a file format is compatible, or whatever. Granted, this was 5+ years ago, and a lot of rough edges have gotten filed off between now and then. Anyway, what'd I do? Moved to a Mac not long after OS X came out

The 'toaster' interface for those days I just don't feel like forcing the machine to submit to my will, yet the power of the command line interface and the BSD underpinnings for when I want to tinker. I've wound up back w/ PC's because of a few applications that there just aren't equivalent Mac apps for (and probably won't ever be). With the new Intel processor Macs, I'm looking at the best of all worlds... Mac for regular use, PC for the specialty apps, and either Darwin (the flavor of BSD underlying the GUI interface of OS X) or Linux for those days when the need to fiddle just won't go away

[Kevin Scott]

I have done computer consulting and computer security work for many years. As a result I have been exposed to many of the various Unix flavors through my clients or my own research/testing. I have used FreeBSD and Redhat on my home computers for many years.

Redhat is a very user friendly and feature rich Linux variant. It used to be freeware, however, they now charge a fee for it (I believe it is $179). You could also check out Fedora. Fedora is the free distribution now available from Redhat.

[Randal Stevenson]

Anyone using Linux? Any particular place to get it from? I want to put it on it's own harddrive, can I have dual operating systems this way? Have a old pentium II that I thought I'd try it out on.

I would STRONGLY recommend Distrowatch. You also might want to list the memory specs of your test system.
There are several (lots actually) distro's that can boot, and operate from cd. Knoppix, Gnoppix, (same thing with a different xwindow gui), Pclinuxos, Ubuntu, Mandriva move, etc (not sure about Gentoo, another well liked distro).
If you have a fast cable connection, you can download and get several of these for the cost of time and the disc you burn them on, otherwise, you have places like Cheapbytes that you can get cheap copies.

[Peter Stahl]

Thanks everyone for your replies so far, keep em coming. I'm going to at least try to make a DVD I can run Linux off before I get into a harddrive setup. Maybe some day MS won't be such a Monopoly.

[Art Mulder]

Peter,

I've been using Ubuntu on my home PC for almost 3 years now. I have 15 years of using Unix behind me, so nothing much about setting up Linux scares me.

Still, Ubuntu is the closest Linux I had ever found that came close to the "it just works" experience of Mac OS-X. (My wife has a Mac mini, great system.) Upgrades can still be a bit tricky, but just read the advice on the forums and follow the "howto's" and it should be fine.

I used to use Redhat, and found Ubuntu easier -- now remember, this was 2-3 years ago. I have no idea how easy/friendly Redhat/Fedora are these days.

(Redhat is the commercial version from Redhat the company, Fedora is the free version)

I also agree with the advice to first try out a "Live" cd/dvd that you can boot from to try it out.

Further advice: I always configure my personal machines drives like this:
One) five-ten Gig OS partition
two) five-ten gig OS partition
three) everything else for user data.

Then you put your user data in the third partition. By having TWO OS partitions the upgrades are much safer - make a copy of the OS on the one, and then upgrade. If something goes wrong, you still have a copy, AND it does not affect your user data.

...art

[Hans Loeblich]

From someone that is running both Fedora (5) and Ubuntu (Edgy), I must say I prefer Ubuntu much more. Hardware support was better(particularly wireless on my laptop), and the package manager is much faster and feels more polished.

That said, I haven't tried upgrading to the latest Fedora 6.