Spyware

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by Linux dude+Jan 12 2004, 07:14 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Linux dude @ Jan 12 2004, 07:14 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>If you choose this option I recommend an mimimum of 256 system RAM and at least 64 video RAM as it takes a preformance hit and is very memory hungry&#33;
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GNU/Linux is not memory hungry, unlike other OS&#39;s, GNU/Linux reports memory usage differently then does Windows. Plus it handles and takes advantage of all the memory you have.
Also you should rebuild your kernel if you want to improve performance. Thus eliminating those options compiled into the kernel that you have no need for, and optimizing the kernel code to your specific CPU.

IT also depends on what window manager your using, such as KDE, or Fluxbox, or Blackbox or XFce how how much memory is being used.
Or you you opt not to us any.

<!--QuoteBegin--andrew n.@Dec 23 2003, 12:35 PM
For a beginner to Linux, which version could anyone recommend to me? I tried Mandrake 6.
a. n.[/quote]

There are other alternatives to Ms Windows besides GNU/Linux. Such as QNX, BeOS, Darwin, Amiga OS, Solaris, IRIX, the *BSD family and ofcourse; Apple Macintosh, and many many more.

But the most visible presently; aside from Apple is GNU/Linux.
Since GNU/Linux comes from a UNIX heritage, it is still much more complex than MS Windows.
The reason computers are popular now moreso than in the past, besides the lower pricing, is what Microsoft did with the desktop OS. Which was making it simpler to use a computer and making the OS affordable for end users and OEMs to pre ship systems with an OS. Apple still being quite expensive at the time too, made for the giant leaps MS took into the market.

GNU/Linux is FREE software, but that means Free; like Free Speech, not free from price. Lots of people think GNU/Linux can be had for free, and when it is not, the sellers should be tarred and featherd, but one is permitted to make profit from the software. So you might find some distros that you must pay for; like SuSE.

GNU/Linux still requires a user to be more knowledgeable about computers in general than the average Windows user. For most *NIX&#39;s (includes GNU/Linux, IRIX, *BSD, Solaris..etc) the user needs to know what sort of hardware they have installed, such as video cards and their chipsets, the chipset of the network cards or modems (NOT winmodems - they dont work for the most part under *nix), their monitor and its capable horizontal & vertical sync, ( not the 800x600 display resolution), such as Monitor 1 is [30Khz - 82Khz Horizontal[ and [50hz - 120hz Vertical] at 76hz.

You need to know what sort of mouse you have, and which port it is using, if it is a serial on ttys0, or ttys2...
Alot of this is now slowly being auto config&#39;d during boot time or installation time on a number of distros, but it still is not standard practive on all. so it is always good to learn these.

When you wish to load files from a CD-ROM on Windows you just place the CD into the drive, and click the, usually, D: drive. and your ready to go, While under the *NIX systems for the most part, you need to issue a command from a superuser account, to be able to read the cd-rom, so you would issue mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom, and now you can read the contents of the CD-ROM under the directory /mnt/cdrom, or anywhere you wish to mount the drive, unlike Windows, UNIX does not care really where the physical device is, and there are no such things as a "c:" drive or "a:" drive. You mount your devices where you want. If i wanted to mount my cdrom drive as being called 650megs, i could mount it as "/home directory/my devices/650megs", and that would be where i access my CD-ROM from. Under windows my floppy drive is mounted as A:, under *NIX i have it mounted as "/mnt/floppy"

Windows makes is simple to install software, by pointing & clicking on a file and having it install and ready to run. While for the most part GNU/Linux requires you to know which route your distribution handles files, you can click and install also, but for the reason your picking GNU/Linux is the choice and control and ability to get more performance, so you would opt to compile the software from source and install that way, which requires more time, but gives you a much more finely-tune binary for your system.

Alot of distros now coming out that do make it much easier for a Windows user to switch over. Without requiring all the knowledge of a UNIX admin. but with any trade-off, you are also losing alot of the benefits, such as configuration & control and security, though loss of security does not mean your at the same level as Windows&#39;s security policy. Some of the distros, run the user as the root user, which allows you to control everything, such as mounting and installing software without need of switching to superuser. But this is a bad idea and decreases the effectiveness of *nix to "an accident waiting to happen."
Why do these distros run the everyday user at root priviliges? to make GNU/Linux more "Windows-like" to Windows users. as with Windows (except NT core versions; if properly setup) any user can install software and make changes without the need of a password.

Some distros come with GUI config utilites, and some still require you to manually hand edit these with a text editor. the benefit to hand editing is ofcourse; more power and ability to add undocumented tweaks, while a GUI config utility is only going to handle so many options. and it still requires you to be in a X session, while hand editing can be done via a term session. If your X does not load, you can not use the GUI editing utilty to makes changes to your system, if things go wrong. So another reason to learn to hand edit your config files.

It helps if you have a well working knowledge of DOS when migrating to *NIX. although there is alot of differences between the 2, the ability to navigate and get things done via the CLI is useful under *NIX.

Since you mentioned Mandrake Linux, (which started as a optimized version (i586) of Red Hat Linux) that you had once tried before, you might find it much easier to use today then in the 6.0 release days. Even then Mandrake Linux was much easier to install than the majority of distros at that time. Though it was not then the easiest, it was closer to easy then most.
One of the more interestingly easy distros was Corel Linux, which is longer developed by Corel, but still lives on through the Xandros Desktop OS, http://www.xandros.com/. it was designed as a workstation, not suitable for the average home user though, but did fine as a workstation. Another one that was advanced for the time was Caldera OpenLinux. One of the only distros i recall that when you started to install the OS, it then switched over to a nice game of Tetris you could play while the system was being installed in the background. Though i do not believe that SCO; with its lawsuit pending against IBM over its contribution to GNU/Linux, still offers its Linux distro to the public any longer.

Since there are many different distros for GNU/Linux you also have to decide if you want to use a pre built distro for speed of installation, or a build from source distro that will give you the most control over the whole system, from which packages are installed to which optimization you want, based on your CPU & hardware.

There are many choices when deciding on what you want to do with your GNU/Linux distro. Such as will this be a workstation? a server? a firewall? a multimedia system.
then there is, do you want to partition the drive to install the OS, or do you wish you install into an already occupied space, such as onto a FAT32 partition or DOS partition, or do you not want to install at all, but run your OS from a CD only. Do you want to run a floppy based version? or through an emulator? Do you want a full distro with thousands of packages or a mini distro, enough to build a decent base system

If you can have a fast net connex, then you can sample many varieties, if you dont, then you might have to purchase your CD&#39;s from online places, which can sell distros for less than a couple dollars (&#036;1.99 some places),http://www.linuxcd.org/, or from local bookstores which carry software, or even at the local computer super centers.

You might want to start out with a LiveCD version to use, this is a self contained version of a distro, that boots from a cd, runs the whole OS via RAM, so it does not require any partitioning or installing software. this will let you run the os and experience it without the headaches of installing.

there are a couple LiveCD versions also you can try.
Slackware-Live CD http://www.slackware-live.org/ is a bootable CD containing Linux operating system. It runs Linux directly from CDROM without installing. Based on Slackware.[*]Gnoppix, http://www.gnoppix.org/ is a linux live cd based upon Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody). [*]KNOPPIX, http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals.
[*]Lycoris,http://www.lycoris.com/ is developed with the Windows user in mind, and may be an easier distro to install.[*]Yoper, http://www.yoper.com/ is a multipurpose high performance operating system which has been carefully optimised for PC&#39;s with either 686 or higher processor types.
[*]DragonLinux http://dragonlinux.sourceforge.net/about.php is a complete Linux operating system distribution that has been customized to install on top of versions of Microsoft Windows or any version of DOS. [*]Phat Linux http://www.phatlinux.com/ can be installed on the same partition as Windows.[*]Phat Linux will install like a regular Windows application, but run as any other Linux installation would.[*]Topologilinux http://topologi-linux.sourceforge.net/about.php runs on top of any dos/windows system without partitioning your hard disk. It is very easy to install Unlike other Linux distributions Topologilinux Does not need any partitioning.

[TheBulbasaurfreak]

Only use Linux if u are experienced.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by TheBulbasaurfreak@Jan 16 2004, 04:08 PM
Only use Linux if u are experienced.

The only way you become experienced is by using it, LiveCD makes is much easier to learn with less mistakes, as you can not delete anything on the LiveCD.
No one *knows* how to use Windows, until they use it.

[TheBulbasaurfreak]

Ok, but some versions of Linux are hard to install to the beginner.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by TheBulbasaurfreak@Jan 17 2004, 07:18 AM
Ok, but some versions of Linux are hard to install to the beginner.

They are all more complicated than MS Windows; but DOS is harder to use than windows as well but much eaiser to install. Since GNU/LINUX is similar to UNIX. You will need to know alot more about your OS than a typical Windows user knows, which i did state that in the above long reply.
Which is why i added links for some of the easier to use distros.

You don&#39;t need to know to much about GNU/Linux while running a LiveCD, just download the ISO, burn it, reboot computer with CD in CD-ROm, make sure the CD-ROM drive is set to be a bootable device, and it will start, Most of the LiveCD distros have on-screen instructions, if your able to read, you should be able to run it with little or no problems. the only problems will be if your running a system which relies solely on Windows drivers to make hardware work, such as alot of the Dells, Gateway, Compaqs. If your running on a hand built machine, you will have much more success in getting things to work.