Linux and Programs

[SidewinderX]

Hey guys, I was thinking about installing linux on my second HDD, and I had a question.

When running in linux, will it automaticaly detect games and shit that i have installed (if i'm running a windows emulator), or will i have to do something special?

 

[mrchimp]

Unless you have an Nvidia card I wouldn't recomend even trying to use Linux for games.

To answer your rather vague question, the answer is proberly no. You will have to add programs to the start menu yourself, if thats what you mean.

 

[SidewinderX]

Another quick linux question. If I install linux on my 2nd HDD, is there a way to make it so it jsut boots up to winXP unless I make it restart to linux or soemthing?

The other people who use my comp proberly wouldn't know what to do at a coose OS screen

 

[LoneDeranger]

Yeah on the "Choose OS screen" you can set the default OS, and if you dont press anything it will load it in 10 seconds or so.

 

[SidewinderX]

well no, I'd rather jsut not have the screen period.

 

[jonbob]

If you set the option in your BIOS to boot from the XP disk first then it won't even bother looking at anything else, but you can still use the boot from menu (depending on motherboard you usually press F11) to use the Linux disk.

But I wouldn't recommend Linux unless you know what you're doing - I still haven't figured out most of it. And I miss good 'ol setup.exe

 

[RandomPING]

I'm thinking about throwing Linux on an old P3 600Mhz system i have, just to tinker with it a little. Anyone have recomendations on which to get? I've heard of Linux, Lindows, and like two other flavors of Linux. And any recomendations where to get em?

 

[RoyaleWithCheese]

Try to get Suse, it's a Linux version which was recommended by my colleague (he knows a lot of Linux).

I've played around with it a couple of weeks now, and it has some really good features. But don't expect it to be as monkeyproof as windows. You really have to read the readmes and faq very carefully. Try to install mplayer for example (=dvd player programme for linux, not easy but very useful to learn how to compile and find your way around)

 

[babywax]

Almost all distros (a distro is a distrubution) are free. I used to use Red Hat 8, but I stopped using linux as I didn't really use it for anything, it was just there to screw around with for fun.

Mandrake is a popular choice. There is Knoppix, which is real easy to set up, and it takes NO hard drive space, all of Knoppix fits entirely onto a 3 1/2 inch floppy...
Red Hat used to be popular too. Caldera is also supposed to be nice, but a little more barebones(or so I've heard).

Links!
http://www.Linuxnewbie.org
http://www.Linuxdoc.org
http://www.google.com/linux (of course)


A couple of suggestions:
Use GRUB as your boot manager, I never liked LILO.
Most people say Mandrake or Red Hat are the best options for users coming from a windows set up, due to their pretty easy to use GUI.
I like KDE, never liked Gnome, but some people love Gnome.

That's about it for now... post is getting too long lol

 

[Skandal]

I'm running Debian as a gateway machine here in my college dorm. Debian is very easy to maintain once you get it installed. But the installation is infamously difficult. I would get myself one of the distributions based on Debian but which are easier to install. Some of those distros are:

Lindows - I've heard it oversimplifies too much by giving the default user root privileges
Libranet - I only heard good things about this one but I don't know if it's possible to download
Knoppix - A Live cd based on debian which includes KDE and doesn't even have to be installed on your harddrive. Can be found at www.knoppix.net
Gnoppix - Like Knoppix but uses the Gnome desktop environment instead.

If you are unsure about linux, trying out Knoppix or Gnoppix are great ways to learn more. After you install them on your harddrive they basically become Debian, which is great=)

Good luck

 

[jonbob]

I recommend Red Hat - or rather the Fedora Project, then Madrake, then SuSE, then Debian. Avoid Lindows.