Well, Ive finally decided that im going to format my computer today and run a 100% linux bedroom :) well, computer at least. Think im gonna start with RedHat and in a month or so switch over to Slack. Somewhat of a Linux newbie... but know enough I think to at least know where to look for my answers :P Was just curious, has anyone else taken the plunge to run an all-out Linux box with no MS on it whatsoever? Talking personal use computers here...

Originally posted by Silent-Chaos
Well, Ive finally decided that im going to format my computer today and run a 100% linux bedroom :) well, computer at least. Think im gonna start with RedHat and in a month or so switch over to Slack. Somewhat of a Linux newbie... but know enough I think to at least know where to look for my answers :P Was just curious, has anyone else taken the plunge to run an all-out Linux box with no MS on it whatsoever? Talking personal use computers here...

I've tried it....then I found that I couldn't live without most of the software that Linux can't run...most notably.....The Sims (which btw is the best and only real people simulator)

I couldn't imagine using Linux as a day-to-day desktop OS. Much prefer Windows for 'general' use..

Welp... who knows, I may end up coming back with my arms wide open to MS :P Lets just hope not...

I haven't ran windows in many months.. about 6 months or so..

I have close to 24 days uptime.. uptime has been hard to keep up lately with all the power outages lasting for hours on end.

Hi,

I would suggest considering multi boot till you no longer need Windows. What happens if you blow away windows, mess up your Linux box, then can't use the internet to look up stuff or get help? With multiboot, you just shut down, boot up into Windows, then go online to read and figure out what went wrong and what you need to do to get past the problem.

Right now I have a machine with multiple hard drives. Each one has a different OS. I use a Romtec TRIOS hard drive selector. It's nice. Cost $50 at an office supply store (can try newegg.com too). Push a button to select the hard drive you want to boot from. Then turn on the computer. The hard drive you selected will be the ONLY one to boot up and be available. The others are physically isolated. So, if I were to totally trash what's on one drive, I can just shut down, hit a button to select another drive, turn on the machine and be booted up into another OS.

I wanted multiple hard drives -- each with one OS -- so I could experiment with different partitioning strategies. I would be more limited if I were multi booting off one hard drive.

There is an option to install Linux within an MS-DOS partition. This is useful if you don't have empty space available on your drive for a bootable partition. I don't know if bootable partitions still need to be below cylinder 1024 or not. I think Red Hat docs have info on this for their 7.2 distro. Goto redhat.com for more info.

Another option is to go with demolinux. It's a Linux distro on a CD-ROM. You can put an "anchor" on your hard drive to speed it up. With a CD-ROM you could take your Linux with you to use on whatever computer without modifying what's on the hard drive of the machine you are running demolinux upon.

Rather than provide links, I suggest you go to Google for more information on anything above of interest. You will find it a good habit to get into!

Also, may I suggest the perfect first *nix command at a terminal window prompt: man man

A GREAT book for anyone interested in learning what they need to know about Linux to administer a server -- like just what a person interested in running a dedicated server for web hosting would need to know -- is:

Linux System Administration: A user's Guide
by Marcel Gagne.

Get this book, work through it in front of your Linux machine and you'll learn what you need to learn. Don't just read...do what you're reading about. Even if it's just "man ls".

I prefer *BSD myself, but since so many low cost dedicated server offerings use Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2, that might be a good distro choice to start with. Just keep in mind Red Hat does some stuff in a non standard Unix way. You may later have to "unlearn" some things. But since so much out there refers to Red Hat, I think it's an OK first choice. Most of what you learn will transfer to whatever *nix you finally end up going with (I lean to FreeBSD right now).

Also keep in mind that on a production server, IMO, one should NOT have "X" running. That means NO GUI on the server. So make sure you learn how to do things via the command line -- not just in a KDE or GNOME GUI window. A person can learn all they need to know and administer their servers without ever going into a GUI or running "X" ; i.e. Xfree86. GUIs are nice to learn with, but keep in mind a server is different than a desktop machine. The fewer things running on a server, the less security holes. That's why lots of folks do not run "X" on their servers.


Hope the above is helpful to some.


Best wishes,

Louis

Hi.

I'm about to do the same but I still going to need to run Win software so I'm going to use Lindows and can only hope that it works as intended. Check it out at http://www.lindows.com/

-Nordic

Yeah, go ahead and install RedHat on your desktop. I've had mine without Windows for, uh...like 3 months

Originally posted by Nordic
Hi.

I'm about to do the same but I still going to need to run Win software so I'm going to use Lindows and can only hope that it works as intended. Check it out at http://www.lindows.com/

-Nordic

If you think you'll need to run some Windoze aps I'd suggest you try Win4Lin instead of Lindows. Lindows is an "experiment" in progress, at best. As of now, Lindows is using WINE, and won't run all that much Windows software.

However, Win4Lin will run most Windows applications, including IE, Word, FrontPage, Outlook, etc.

Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com/products/win4lin30/index.php)

Note that there are down-sides to using Win4Lin, including it's Windows 95 or 98 only (no NT, XP, etc.), and has some memory limits, etc. See the online docs for more info.

There's also VMWare, but it's pretty high-dollar stuff! ;)

saintlouis, I was looking at that multi-drive switch at Newegg -sounds nice. I may try it out on the next rig that I build probably when AMD intruduces it's Clawhammer.

However, I have way too much windows software to ever consider linux as my main OS. I was thinking , however, of trying it on one of my spare machines just to play with.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check that one out :)

-Nordic

Originally posted by akashd


I've tried it....then I found that I couldn't live without most of the software that Linux can't run...most notably.....The Sims (which btw is the best and only real people simulator)

Although I don't recommend Mandrake, check out: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/81/gaming-edition :)

I bought a new desktop almost a year ago that has WinME installed on it. I was so disgusted with it, I made a dual boot with RedHat on it as well. I was very close to just switching over till I discovered the lack of being about to use Photoshop and Macromedia products. RedHat sat there for a while, being used a fair bit for being online and little else.

A week ago I installed XP on this thing, then deleted RedHat. So far it's been an excellent system and am more than happy with it.

Will I ever go to Linux alone? Possibly, once they natively support the software I need (whether the software companies built versions for it, or there's a great inbuilt way to run them)

Right now however, I'm in the process of reinstalling software onto the XP drive, before I pull out Partiton Magic and remove ME forever.

Greg Moore

I still prefer two machines and a KVM switch over a dual boot Linux & Windows machine.

I can't do without my windows, yet.

Originally posted by akashik


A week ago I installed XP on this thing, then deleted RedHat. So far it's been an excellent system and am more than happy with it.

Greg Moore


XP PRO is a great OS. I been running it since mid-December, I switched over from W2k Pro. The only issue that I've had so far was lack of driver support for an old scanner, I've since just decided to replace it, it was cheap enough. It is the most stable windows OS that I've ever had, including W2K.

Mac OSX is simply the greatest thing ever.

I have full command line interface, with a nice GUI for actually doing some work (Photoshop, Flash etc...). And with VPC I can run Windows XP, Red Hat Linux, OS9 and OSX all at the same time. The dev tools that come with OSX can't be beat.

Plus, having Apache, MySQL and PHP running locally in OSX is a pretty good deal.

But you have to have a Mac, which I'm sure no one likes.

Oh well, just my opinion.

so far my only issue with XP was my keyboard and mouse (USB), but it appears to be a BIOS issue with this computer rather than XP itself. $50 fixed that though and got me a new, better keyboard and mouse. :D

Greg Moore

Originally posted by driverdave
Mac OSX is simply the greatest thing ever.

And with VPC I can run Windows XP, Red Hat Linux, OS9 and OSX all at the same time. The dev tools that come with OSX can't be beat.



Is that "virtual PC"? I was told that when you are running your applications through VPC that they run slower as opposed to running them on a PC. What is your experience with that?

Disappointed with WinME, I was 100% Windows Free for quite a while. I did the "dual boot" thing when I first installed linux. I didn't use any fancy hardware or extra software - just set it up through the RH installation CD. Anyway, after 2 months of "dual booting" and never once actually booting windows, I backed up my files, formatted the drive, and went MS-Free.

Unfortunately, it is hard to support customers who ask questions about Outlook, FrontPage, IE, and other Windows apps without using them, myself. So, I bought a copy of XP Home (no way I was going back to ME), setup the computer as a dual boot again, began using XP, and found that it's actually a pretty nice OS.

ME was the worst piece of junk that microsoft ever put out. It came and went.

Originally posted by akashd


I've tried it....then I found that I couldn't live without most of the software that Linux can't run...most notably.....The Sims (which btw is the best and only real people simulator)

I've been hearing stirrings about a release of The Sims for one of the linux flavors... umm... Mandrake, IIRC.

If I'm honest with myself, The Sims is the only reason I'm still running Windows. lol

BTW, Ever been to livin-it-up.net? Big simming site. :D

Whats "windows" anyway? Go Slackware! :D

Hi web docta,

I really like my Romtec TRIOS. In fact, when I get some time, I'm going to try and daisy chain two of them. Then run five physically isolated drives -- each with a different OS. Should work fine.

Anyway -- one caveat -- IDE cable length. The TRIOS comes with three IDE cables for the three drives you can hook up to it.

My case is a Lian-Li PC-70 full size tower with 15 drive bays. 6 of the 9 external bays are 5 1/4 inch. Right now, I have 4 of those bays taken up with a TRIOS hard drive selector and three IDE drives. A CD-RW and DVD drive take up the other two 5 1/4 external drives.

To use the lower 6 hard drive bays, I ordered custom cables from Romtec. The ones that came with the TRIOS were not all long enough to reach -- but that's due to the size of my case; not a fault of the TRIOS. Just a heads up to you.

For me, the TRIOS works GREAT. For $50 it can't be beat. I ordered longer IDE cables to be able to use my lower drive bays; went with the more expensive teflon IDE cables from Romtec -- I go for performance/data validity stuff like that.

As always, IDE cables should be 19 inches MAX.

Basically Romtec's IDE cables have a connector on each end -- without the third one a normal two drive IDE cable has.

Just a heads up. Try it, see how you like it. You may find the IDE cables that come with the TRIOS are long enough to work in your case. I did not try using a conventional cable that most folks use for two IDE drives (to have a 18/19 inch cable) -- they may or may not work fine.

BTW, what do you like about XP Pro over W2K Pro?

Just a heads up/FYI,

Louis

I'm running XP Pro Corporate. XP is based on W2K. I overclock my rig. I'm running a 1.4 AMD T-bird @ 1.6 and I got the BSOD a lot more with W2K than with XP. I rarely crash with at all with XP.
I really like the fast user switching with XP. Having 5 computers on my home LAN, it makes it really convenient to log on and off users, without closing down applications. I also like a lot of little things like the clear fonts which make text appear almost as if it were printed. I just like the way it looks and how you can customize it.
I'm using an Antec SX-840 case , I really like the case. It has lots of room and plenty of cooling. I think that the standard 24" IDE cables would work fine in there. I have another rig that uses 24" cables and I'm not having any problems with the legnth.