Fun with Linux

[admin]

awhile back i downloaded Red Hat 8.0 from www.redhat.com for a future install on Linux.

why? cuz every where i read people keep saying how much they love linux! so f*k it.

Linux is basically a free Operating System. Takes forever to download though. There is three different CDs one has to download to install. took me about three days, and about 7 hours each, and thats cuz i am on a cable modem!

anyway, shortly after i downloaded and burnt the discs i tried installing on old PC i have here. didnt work, not enough memory.

so the cds sat in my case for about three weeks. till my hard drive on this pc burnt.

so when i got sent the new 10 gig, i set a side 2 gigs for the Linux OS.

Installation was not easy. Ill get into it in another post later today or tomorrow.

--Sal-

[admin]

when i got the hard drive i split it into three partitions.

C:6
D:4
E:10.

C is where my win2k and appications are sitting, and E for non systemfiles, My Documents.

I used partition magic to delete the D drive, create a 100mb root partition and 256 swap partition, both for linux.

when i booted from the cds to install linux it went very smoothly and it automatically allocated the free space on my disk for the rest of the linux installation.

i used Grub as my bootloader, to ask me which OS to boot.

i booted into win2k just fine, but when i would try to boot linux it would go through its file processing and then hang on INIT: Booting Version 2.84.

i then booted to win2k to look at the partitions the installation had made. When i ran partition magic i recieved two errors stating something to the effect of my LBA sector changing. I didnt document the error. I was offered a dialog box to fix it. Which it told me it corrected. When i rebooted to try linux again, to record zactly where it hung, the Grub bootloader did not come up. Instead, i was taken to a Grub Command Line interface. from  here on out i could not boot either OS.

it stayed like this for a day and half. i did some research and some how or another (im guessing with pmagic) my bootloader got screwed. so i did a reinstall, and made sure not to run pmagic again.

the linux installation automatically deleted the partitions PMagic made and created new ones. it also made another Grub bootloader.

I was still hanging on the INIT line. I did some research and found i had to had the following commad to a conf file that i have not yet found

apm=off

i cheated by adding that command to the bootable floppy which linux made on istall. so as of now, i am booting to linux with a floppy disk.

i'll get into what i think of the OS later.....

[admin]

well, i have had more time these days to mess with Linux, trying to keep my mind off of things.

Anyway. i got her on the Internet last with my Road Runner. spent some time messing with the Ethernet card configuration last night. I had to use a NE2000 clone in order for it to work.

So i spent most of the time tweaking my Internet Settings. I am using Evolution for my POP mail accounts. i like Evolution so far. It has news feeds, weather, calendaring. It also has Palm Pilot Syncing, i tried very quickly last night to see if it would work, but i have to do some tweaking to get it to work.

I also got the Messenger up and running. It is called Gaim, and it is an all in one messeger, sort of like Trilliian for Windows. It supports , AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, Zephyr, and Gadu Gadu. The last three i never heard of.

I was messing with the Printer a little while ago. I am not able to print yet. i need to add a few lines to my etc/host file. I still need to figure that out.

So far i am liking this OS. Soon as i get all my Peripherals going i dont see why i would need Windows? Of course i will need it..hehe... for something.

--Sal-