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Unread 30 Jun 2003, 14:45   #1
JammyJim
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Linux - OMG
Yes..
OMG

im actually thinking of installing this mysterious piece of OS on an old pc i have sitting in the corner of my room.

NOW

i have a couple of questions :

The PC in question is a Packard Bell Platinum 3500 or sum such
PIII 500
512meg Ram
10gig Hard disk (ive nabbed the other 30 and stuck it in the machine im using now)
Voodoo 3 3500 AGP




It currently has WinXP Home installed on its slow candy ass. However ive been informed by many on thids forum and from other people i know that Linux is 'teh ace' if you can install it correctly.

Packardbell have some weird 'boot sector' code rubbish that the mobo uses to identify the pc.

I installed WinNt workstation on this machine once and it let to complete catastrophe that meant i was on the phone to various support lines for upwards of 3 hours trying to fix the problem.
It seems that if this 'first few clusters' of the hdd is overwritten then the PB will read it as an error and go beserk.

Itll check the memory but then just stop with an error.
Now im fairluy sure that if i search high and low i can find the original PB CD's so i can 'restore' this part of the hard drive shuold anything go pear shaped.

However the CD needs DOS or a Dos environment to work. Now seeing as i have the most basic of knowledge when it comes to how an operating system runs i have several questions :


1. Will linux run on my old machine
2. Is it worth it.
3. If catastrophe does strike can i just return it to good old winxp
4. Can i boot from a floppy into a DOS based command prompt
5. Will Linux overwrite the part of the Hard drive the PB reads when first booting up.


Any help is much appreciated.
I wish to learn about this new fabled system of 'gadgetry' and the only way i can do it is if i actually download the thing and run it. If all goes well i may even dual boot on this PC.

JJ
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Unread 30 Jun 2003, 15:01   #2
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A PIII 500 with 512mb is plenty enough!! You say XP runs slow on that? You're ver demanding, dear

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Unread 30 Jun 2003, 21:40   #3
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im on a p3 733mhz with 384mb ram and all i have to tell you is:

Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1 (5.1 - 2600) uptime - 1w 6d 12h 53m 59s
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Unread 30 Jun 2003, 22:06   #4
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If all else fails install the bootloader on a floppy!
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Unread 30 Jun 2003, 22:20   #5
JammyJim
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no my point isnt that windows is crap

it isnt
ive had tihs pc running for nearly 3 weeks with it on and no restarts.

i want to learn about linux and the only way to do that is to install it.

my old pc is sitting there gathering dust in the corner. its hdd does have some files that may be valuable which is my only concern but i will back those up onto CD before i do this.
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Unread 30 Jun 2003, 22:49   #6
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Hmm. I couldn't get networking running on Linux, so decided it was **** rather than I was impatient.

DOS ALL THE WAY BABY.

So, questions:

If it bites, you can restore XP just by popping the CD into the drive as usual and booting, Linux will run with no difficulty on that machine though GUI performance mightn't be as good as XP, you can always drop to a DOS prompt with an appropriate boot floppy, and it's worth it for the experience of 'the other side'.

And yes, LILO (Linux Loader or some other acronym rubbish) will overwrite the boot sector of the drive allowing dual boot avec XP should it be required, so it'll probably trash the stuff the PB wants to examine, but if it does just boot into linux off a floppy, and profit ensues (shouldn't check the hdd boot sector until after it's loaded off the floppy, which it should allow)

I'm tired. =(
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Unread 1 Jul 2003, 16:03   #7
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If these sectors are stored in the boot sector then yes LILO will kill them so you may have to boot it off a floppy.
As for learning - it depends what distro you use.
If I were you I'd start with something "fluffy" like MDK which will autoconfigure things like networking and XF86 for you - then you can play with them and break them from a working state, rather than trying for hours to get it working at all.
The reason for this is that Linux being what it is (ie. not only very modular, but incosistant in terms of command syntax etc because different people have built different bits) you need many programs to get, what under windows would be considered a simple unit, to work.
Take networking - if you're going for self config, you first need to find the drivers for your network card, possibly compile them, and load them at boot time. Then you have to set up all sorts of services properly to get the low level stuff going. Then if you want to use the "internet proper" with a graphical browser etc, you need to have installed and set-up XF86 and a desktop environment like KDE, and go through configuring it to use your networking setup.

This is the reason I've allways used "fluffy" distros, because I can't be arsed to spend weeks trawling through howto's and man pages just to get the basics working. I know enough to get by but I seriously doubt I could confiure the whole lot from scratch.
I never did get XF86 working when I tried Debian...
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