Seeking introductory assistance into the world of Linux

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Hello everyone,

Seeking not just any introduction, but one as I try to incorporate it into a pretty minimal and unimpressive 8 yr-old -hand-me-down "AcerNote Light" Laptop that I was recently given...

So, it came equipped with Windows 95, it has only 16 mb of RAM, 1 gb of disk space (I think it has 120 mhz), it has a cd-rom drive and has room for a floppy drive (though it doesn't have one installed) and slots for a lan card, which I've just installed.

I've know absolutely nothing about Linux but have been told that it takes up less resources than a Windows OS & doesn't discriminate as much when it comes to system specs and therefore would be better suited for a machine such as mine.

In doing some browsing, I came accross an application called "Virtual-Linux" at the Sourceforge.net site, which seems to improve the situation even more (as you can see by the description below). I'm in the process of getting the later beta version, v1.1: http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-linux/

Quote:

Virtual Linux
Description: Virtual Linux is basically the Mandrake Linux operating system, modified to run directly from your cd rom drive. It can be run with or without a hard drive. This is great for showing people the power and flexibility of Linux. You can put the cd in your cd rom drive and reboot....and you will soon have a powerful Linux system at your disposal...all without the hassles of loading new software or repartioning your hard drive or any of that technical stuff.

Added on: 13-Jan-2003 | Downloads: 2012 | Rating: 10.0

What I'm hoping to get out of this thread is some feedback on the particular route I'm taking in trying to best serve what little resources my laptop has to offer,

as well as for someone to either directly give me some starters on what Linux is all about & how to use it or at the very least to point me in the direction of some helpful sites/links/pdf's/doc's/any kind of literature whatsoever, etc, on Linux for beginners.

Many thanks,
Roosh :wink:

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**I do have this concern: If this Linux-install for any reason, as if an attempt at installing win 98 for that matter, were unsuccessfull, I'm not sure how I would get win 95 back on the laptop, as it came with the OS pre-installed, and I don't have any of the laptop's paperwork, disks, or anything else, let alone a Win 95 reinstallation disk...
The Laptop's Bios seems very bare bones as well: I don't see an area to set the boot configuration, that so I can set cd to #1. Otherwise, it will just keep reloading the preinstalled 95. I don't see how to get to the prompt area to go through the fdisk process...
There is the option to adjust the hard disk's size from 1gb capacity and "auto" or "user", to just 0. In that case, it appears as though, in a sense, that I've f-disked the thing, bec, when I restart it asks for the system diskette. The irony is that there's no floppy drive...
Aaaaarghhhh!!!

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Well, just so you know, the real (non-virtual) linux is free and downloadable too.

I'm not really an expert with computers, but I use linux. If you use the KDE desktop, it's a lot like windows (with a "start menu" too) except that a lot of file managing stuff that you would normally do on windows explorer or "my computer" is done in a console - it helps to know some basic commands for that.

For the most part, my linux does a lot better than my windows partition in terms of resources, but it doesn't have all of the programs my windows partition does - but then again, if you only have 1 gig of disc space, you probably don't have very many of those programs anyway, haha.

Linux is usually really easy to install though, so I wouldn't worry aboutit failing. That's what windows does. Smile

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If it's that old of a laptop the CD-ROM is probably no more than 4X for running linux from CD would be extremely slow.

Mandrake and RedHat are the easiest installs. Great for first timers but more resource hungry. You may want to start off with one of them and then switch to something faster in the future like Debian. There's also Suse and Slackware. I wouldn't recommend anything else for a novice. Gentoo may be fast but the time it takes to compile everything just isn't worth it.
I still use Mandrake myself with my own customized kernel.

KDE and Gnome desktops are too resource hungry for your laptop. I suggest a window manager like fluxbox. So when installing linux install nothing but fluxbox and its dependencies. For Microsoft Office-type apps, OpenOffice.org is also too resource-hungry. I suggest Abiword (comparable to Word) and Gnumeric (comparable to Excel).

When partitioning, I would suggest a 48mb swap and the rest for the root (/ partition) using reiserfs mounted with the noatime and notail options.

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Abiword always seems like it eats more resources than OpenOffice, at least for me - it takes longer to load anyway. I love gnumeric, though. I have Suse 8.1.

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Just to answer a couple of your other questions...

You should certainly buy Redhat or Mandrake distributions. They run about $40. This is not much considering the fact that they a whole lot of work for you. Especially if you are a beginner this is worth it.

There is no way to eliminate the risk that you will lose Windows and have trouble with Linux leaving you with no OS. But you are running an old computer. Unless you can find someone who has an old Windows CD you probably will not be able to go back.

But that's part of the adventure that makes this type of project fun. Do make sure you have access to the internet from some other source since the answers to most problems can be found with a few google searches.

I highly recommend you do this. Linux is very cool just the experience is worth the admission. If you are the type who likes to get your hands a bit dirtly, that is.

Go ahead, do it.

Please let us know how it goes.

eLviintuaxbilse!

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Do you really need this thing? Is it just a play thing? If so, give it to a school or a poor kid. Don't waste your time. Re-install 95 and give it away. KDE or GNOME will run like ****. If you have a real computer give the old laptop away. You could slap FreeBSD on it and run it as a mail server.? But really, give it to a kid that can't afford a computer. Help him get on the internet and buy yourself a beer.

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Seeking introductory assistance into the world of Linux

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