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Unread 9 Apr 2006, 14:04   #1
JC
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Linux advice needed

I'm considering putting a version of linux on my laptop and want some advice. Until a few months ago i'd never used linux, i'm not the most IT-literate person in the world and i've never done any kind of coding or anything, so this could be a challenge.

I'm having to get used to using Redhat for my PhD, so i thought it might be useful if i played around with it at home and it will give me something to do over Easter. Is Redhat (well actually it would be Fedora Core seeing as Redhat dont do an open source version as such now) a nice simple version for me to set up or is there something else i could use instead that would ease me in to linux?

I'm planning on running whatever version of linux at the same time as Windows XP on my laptop. Would this cause me any problems? I dont want to screw up all my PhD work on Windows. I have 2 hard drives on my laptop so would it be best to split the operating systems between them or just to partition one of my hard drives? I've never partitioned a hard drive either so that could be another thread.

Basically i just want some general advice, whats best to go with, how easy/hard will it be for a newbie like me etc? I might have to find myself an idiots guide to this if i go ahead with it.
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Unread 9 Apr 2006, 18:04   #2
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Re: Linux advice needed

its fairly easy to set up, yes,
FC5 apparently has some 'issues' atm though to get fixed.
Realistically, linux is linux - you could use ubuntu if you wanted to

One thing which may come up - acpi and linux on my laptop dont get along well together, i need to boot it with certain command line switches to avoid it hanging.

If i were you, i would either get a live-cd version and test before installing, or get something like vmware ( its free for the gsx server and player ) to create a virtual machine for linux, running on top of win xp.
that way, you could install and run as many flavours of linux ( and other OS's including windows ) alongside each other simultaneously as you wanted ( ram and hd space permitting )
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Unread 10 Apr 2006, 04:22   #3
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Re: Linux advice needed

I've just put Fedora Core 5 on my ancient Toshiba Satellite Pro 4270 laptop.
To clarify ancient:
- Celeron 500
- 192MB RAM
- S3 Savage something or other graphics card
- 7GB Harddrive

Believe it or not, it works fine.
Even things Linux is notoriously bad at such as power management (APM and ACPI) worked out of the box - the machine can suspend properly, will hibernate when the battery drops to critical, can automatically dim the LCD to conserve power and all that jazz. After grabbing the relevant software (XMMS to play MP3s etc, mPlayer to play dvix, wmv, etc) it works fine and even manages full screen DivX playback without a hitch.

As for your specific requirements, Fedora will prompt you to confirm other OS's when setting up the bootloader during the install process so you can check it's got XP listed. You can go for a one OS per harddrive if you like, it saves having to resize existing partitions certainly. You'll get multiple warnings should be about to overwrite anything during the setup procedure.
Should you find XP didn't make it into the boot menu, you can insert the XP CD, boot from it, go to the recovery console and run the commands "fixboot" and "fixmbr". This will get windows booting again, while knocking out your Linux install. Fedora has a repair CD which has a similar option, which will then let you have another shot at installing the bootloader correctly (once you've read up on it a bit, presumably). To be honest I doubt if this will be necessary as most installs autodetect this stuff now.
One thing I would say is that while planning your install, be aware that while Fedora will be able to read the XP NTFS filesystem (note: only read, not write), XP won't see Fedora at all.

The only other niggle is that, as with many distros now, various "dicey" codecs are not supplied to prevent lawsuits, so you won't be able to play MP3s, DVDs or most video types out of the box (Ubuntu and others are the same in this respect). You'll find plenty of info on how to sort this out on http://www.fedoraforum.org in the howto section, along with lots of other handy tips.

Good luck with whatever you chose. Personally I've found FC5 to be very usable so far - support for laptops and multimedia are two things that have come a long way in Linux recently, and it shows. Incidentally, I chose to use Gnome as my desktop during the installation, so my experience is based on that rather than KDE.
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Unread 10 Apr 2006, 18:39   #4
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Re: Linux advice needed

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll burn FC5 to a couple of CDs when i'm at uni tomorrow and then start playing around. I've read through the installation guide and it seems reasonably simple. Looks like having Windows on my C drive and FC5 on D drive is the best way for me to go, I have plenty of space on each so thats fine.

What's the difference between KDE and Gnome?
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Unread 10 Apr 2006, 19:21   #5
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Re: Linux advice needed

Depending on who you speak to, either everything or nothing
KDE is (from my limited experience) a bit 'chunkier' and more colourful, while Gnome is a bit more minimalist. Install both and see which you prefer, then you'll at least have the libraries should there be any aps written for one that you want to use on the other.
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Unread 10 Apr 2006, 23:42   #6
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Re: Linux advice needed

The very simplest comparison (there are so many things wrong with this that it doesn't bear thinking about) is:
KDE: Think Windows
Gnome: Think OSX

KDE is all about packing in as much functionality as possible, Gnome is about chosing an appropriate subset of functionality to keep the interface clean. Roughly. Just search for "kde vs gnome" on google and you'll get no end of comparisons tbh.
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Unread 11 Apr 2006, 18:43   #7
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Re: Linux advice needed

I've tried installing it and come across a problem already .

It turns out i only actually have 1 hard drive, windows just has it listed as 2 separate partitions and calls them C and D drives. So when i get to the partition screen i've selected 'remove linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout'. From what the installation guide says this should do everything for me but it doesnt.

'Partitioning failed: could not allocate partitions as primary partitions.'

'The following error occurred with your partitioning:
You have not defined a root partition (/), which is required for installation of FC to continue. This can happen if there is not enough space on your hard drive for the installation. You can chose a different automatic partitioning option or select manual partitioning'

I have something along the lines of 60GB free so space isnt an issue. When i try the manual option i am confused because i see the following and havent got a clue what to do with it:

Code:
Device           Type        Size        Start          End
Hard drives
/dev/hda  
  /dev/hda1      vfat       3004          1             383
  /dev/hda2      vfat       45952         384           6241
  /dev/hda3      vfat       46438         6242          12161
      /dev/hda5  vfat       46438         6242          12161
My options are new, edit, delete, reset, RAID or LVM .
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Unread 11 Apr 2006, 21:10   #8
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Re: Linux advice needed

Right i've spoken to a few people and read some stuff and this is what i understand.

hda2 seems to be my C drive and hda 5 my D drive. Ideally what i would like to do is keep Windows on my C drive then split my D drive in 2, say 20GB for FC5 and the rest with Windows on.

The way it sees i have to go about this is by deleting hda3 then adding a new partition as /boot with a size of say 30mb. The i add / to go up to say 20GB (there seems to be no /swap?). This then leaves me with 26GB of free space. Does that sound right so far?

I guess i cant put that new space in a new partition and hope it has windows on when i reboot. Can i leave it as free space and then at some point put windows back on to it so i effectively have my 45GB c drive, 20GB for FC5 and another 25GB windows d drive?
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Unread 11 Apr 2006, 23:57   #9
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Re: Linux advice needed

Ok, I'm slightly drunk (read 4 pints in an hour and a half) so don't take this as gospel.

Hda1 appears to be your recovery partition (often put there by laptop manufacturers, contains drivers etc for reinstalling windows). Keep this.
Hda2 is probably your C: drive.
Hda3 is the definition for an extended partition (a partition which can contain logical drives, which appear to be lettered as standard to windows).
Hda5 is a logical drive within hda3, which appears as D: to windows.

This is what I suggest:
Back up everything you want to keep from D: to C: (or external storage)
Delete hda3 and hda5.
Allow FC5 to use the space made available by this deletion to install linux.

/boot is always a small partition, it's simply the kernel and a couple of other bits required to load the OS.
/ is the root of the linux filesystem and contains everything (including /boot - /boot is a mountpoint within /. Yes this can get confusing. Basicly allow the automatic magic to happen as far as possible).
You're correct, there is no such thing as /swap. The swap partition is set under a different filesystem type and does not appear as a mountpoint within the linux filesystem. It's simply "scratch space" where linux can dump data as it needs to. It's similar to the windows swapfile, except that linux keeps it on a seperate partition.

Hope this helps.
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Unread 14 Apr 2006, 20:58   #10
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Re: Linux advice needed

I assume this is the advice you were talking about for getting mp3s etc to work?

I've downloaded the 2 files it says but then I have problems. init 3 seems to do nothing. I got around this problem by doing ctrl-alt-F3 and then ctrl-alt-F7 but once i've typed in that code init 6 doesnt work.

Any ideas or other ways to get this working?

Edit:
Actually i dont think i'm in /root. It says [Ian@localhost~] rather than [root@localhost Desktop]#. I type cd /root/Desktop and it says permission denied .
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Unread 14 Apr 2006, 21:29   #11
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Re: Linux advice needed

Quote:
Originally Posted by JC
I assume this is the advice you were talking about for getting mp3s etc to work?

I've downloaded the 2 files it says but then I have problems. init 3 seems to do nothing. I got around this problem by doing ctrl-alt-F3 and then ctrl-alt-F7 but once i've typed in that code init 6 doesnt work.

Any ideas or other ways to get this working?

Edit:
Actually i dont think i'm in /root. It says [Ian@localhost~] rather than [root@localhost Desktop]#. I type cd /root/Desktop and it says permission denied .
you arent, you are in /home/ian , the shell prompt is along the lines of Username @ Machine present_working_directory , and ~ is "home directory" , so you are in /home/Username , or /home/ian
one thing you need to understand is unix permissions ( go go gadget google ). Since you are logged in as Ian and not as root, you cant access roots files
( whereas if you were logged in as root you can access everyones - though root is to be used sparingly. with great power comes great responsibility , etc. You do -not- want to be using it for day to day things. Root gives unrestricted access to -all- )
you can switch user to root if you must by typing "su -" , and then the root pass when it asks you though

personally, to get mp3s working i think i did ( on fc4 but it should be the same for you ) :
install the livna repository ( rpm.livna.org , instructions there for fc5 : do rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm )
go to a root console :
"yum install xmms-mp3"
switch back to normal account. Et voila
( be aware yum requires an internet connection, as does the command to install the livna repository, so if you were using the instructions you found because you have no internet connection under linux, then continue to use the instructions of your own - if you do have internet - yum is much easier )
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Unread 14 Apr 2006, 22:34   #12
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Re: Linux advice needed

Yeah, livna still works for xmms-mp3 under FC5.
The only other thing you need is mplayer. For that I followed the advice in this thread.

Good luck.
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