posted 08-23-2001 12:05           

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Give me a hand so I won't have to do my own research.

I just recently cracked and went out and got a 40 gig HD, leaving me with an empty 12 gig drive. So, what better way to use it than load linux on and see how long it takes me to cause irreperable damage with my finely honed lack of unix knowledge?

So, to ask a question that's been asked a thousand times before...

What's the most newbie friendly distro?

Also, any other helpful links would be appreciated. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing here .

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posted 08-23-2001 12:25           

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I would try Mandrake 8.0 You can have it autopartition your harddrive which is a relief and it takes about 10 minutes to install.

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posted 08-23-2001 13:22            

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I second that. Having NO *nix experience whatsoever, I found Mandrake 8.0 very easy to install.

Do youself a favor and check the hardware compatibility list on the Mandrake page.

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posted 08-23-2001 15:21            

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Mandrake.. Even a newbie like weis can use it

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posted 08-23-2001 19:00            

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That's not nice. Weis isn't a newbie. He knows that he's supposed to call *nix machines "boxes".

Apart from that, he's a newbie.

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posted 08-24-2001 05:16         

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SC0 Unix v3.2. You havent truly UNIXed 'till you've "divvied".

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posted 08-25-2001 00:58           

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What kind of visual interface? Gnome, or what? Or does it come bundled with something?

Sorry, I told you I seriously don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing .

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posted 08-25-2001 01:57           

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It comes with a lot of interfaces. The two most popular being Gnome and KDE. You can download the two disks which has just about anything you would ever need. Trust me on this one. Go to http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ it should answer most of your questions. Hope this helps.

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posted 08-25-2001 02:03           

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Also another thing is that it takes advantage of RedHat rpm files so you don't have to deal with unzipping files and manually installing them. You basically just download rpm files using the Mandrake update tool and it installs it for you. No more rebooting to start processes. What a relief. Very easy I mioht add. I am sort of a newbie myself but I may be able to help you if needed.

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posted 08-25-2001 19:25            

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Hunh... I spent 1995-6 doing tech support for the *nix distro of Mosaic, if I'm a newbie then I hesitate to guess what eod is. Considering he was in gradeschool then. As for newbie linux flavors, whoever said that SCO was good for newbies is just a damn sadist. I would start out with Mandrake, but get the new beta, not the 8.0. Or Debian 7.2 is pretty nice'n'easy. Then open a command shell and start experimenting with the "man" and "apropos" commands...

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With proper thrust, pigs fly just fine.
--RFC 1925

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posted 08-25-2001 20:36            

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the Santa Clara Operation = a front for the minions of Satan himself.

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posted 08-26-2001 12:06            

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um, i'm going to deviate from popular opinion and say Caldera OpenLinux 3.1, why? because its debian based, and it can support redslut, thus the best of both worlds, it was my first distro, its decently secure and its easy to setup. its as close to friendly as i've ever found. get it off calderasystems.com

[This message has been edited by hussain (edited 08-26-2001).]

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posted 08-27-2001 01:16           

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Confessions from a n00b, chapter 1:

Alright folks!

I'm about ten minutes into my post-installation bliss!

Unfortunately, its more of a purgatory, considering I've already managed to either misconfigure my vid card, or set an absurdly high res as a typo...either way, i'm seeing 4 of everything .

I'll be back with more heartwarmingly retarded stories tomorrow (if I can fix this and actually see anything).

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posted 08-27-2001 08:33         

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jimbo:
the Santa Clara Operation = a front for the minions of Satan himself.

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Ahh, I think it's Santa Cruz. I agree,
it was a time burner. Especially of you f'ed a kernel build (while optimizing) and booted from it.

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posted 08-27-2001 12:12            

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Although irrelevant to the topic, I must ask a question of Bomboklatt.

Are you a Soulfly fan? Your username would indicate it.

[This message has been edited by PrezMonty (edited 08-27-2001).]

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posted 08-27-2001 13:00         

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The SCO comment was a joke, a joke son, never mind.

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posted 08-27-2001 18:09            

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i back up mandrake as an opinion.....

i have a totally pc-illiterate friend and he could use it even after he killed 4 cd's trying to burn the image..... he didnt even know you could burn anything besides music

but after a couple of reboots and me configing almost everything he can sometimes use it if he just wants to type something up or surf the net

uuuuggggghhhhhh
quack

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posted 08-27-2001 19:08            

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1. that's no teenager
2. the Shar-Pei-like wrinkles in her back disturb me greatly

That is all.

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posted 08-30-2001 00:01           

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Good god, I've now managed to somehow make both windows and linux disbelieve that I have a CD Rom drive.

As an added benefit, I still can't see enough to change the video display in order to be able to make shit out in Linux, and can't reconfigure from the install disk because IT DOESN'T REGISTER .

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posted 08-30-2001 00:17            

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boot into commandline mode in linux and investigate the wonders of the 'xconfigurator' command.

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With proper thrust, pigs fly just fine.
--RFC 1925

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posted 08-30-2001 00:23            

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Oh, and to Marcel - yeah, I guessed that. Back in my NCSA days, it was kind of traditional around dev to put SCO on someone's workstation on April Fool's Day when they weren't around. Several guys just hacked for 24 hours straight so they wouldn't get SCOed. In fact, since the old memory's churning, here's an exchange from my NCSA days between two of the Mosaic developers (both of whom were undergrads):

Dev 1: Of course we should port to SCO, SCO users need a web browser too.

Dev 2: Both of them?

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With proper thrust, pigs fly just fine.
--RFC 1925

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posted 08-31-2001 14:37           

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How about setting up @home on mandrake? Any useful links?

I can't wait to get my first "RTFM".

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posted 08-31-2001 17:49            

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Bombo: Don't think you need a manual.. It is easy.. During the setup you can enter your dhcp info or you can just manually assign it to whatever ip address you have.

If you have your @home dhcp id (would look something like c2748237-a) your golden.

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