I looked at the letters in knowledge base but most are old so I thought I would throw it in here. I'm interested in putting Linux on my old 98 but there are so many questions.
1. Which one should I try? The names are foreign to me, like Red Hat, Mandrake, etc.
2. Is it free and where can I download it from?
3. Is it a system that needs for example Windows OS or does it operate on its own.

Sorry guys as I said I'm new and want to learn as much. Thanx in advance for your advice

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

1. Linux is a general term for operating systems. Usually those names are distributions of a collection of programs that are geared for a particular use or audience.

Since you say your 98 I'd assume that you may need a distribution that is aimed at older systems.

2. Many are free, not all are free or legal to use. See distrowatch or linuxquestions and more places such as linux.com.

3. There are few exceptions but linux is not like or can run with MS products. It is a similar operating system that doesn't allow programs to run on each system.

You may wish to try what is termed a live cd. Live Cd's can boot to newer systems that can generally boot to cd/dvd's. Might start with knoppix or dsl or puppy.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

Hi Jefro thank you for responding and the advice you gave me. I'll start it step by step and see where it leads me. Question: Do I first have to uninstall Win98 and format my HDD? Exactly what are the initial preparations?

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

If you use a Live CD, there's really no preparation necessary other than to make sure your CD/DVD drive is 1st in the boot order...just boot off the CD & run the OS directly from the disc.

You'll have to sort thru the many distros & pick one that best suites your older hardware, then download the ISO & burn it to a CD. Imgburn works well & it's free.

Check out DistroWatch.com ....check the right had column for the "page hit ranking". There's a 100 distros to get you started :-)

Tell us if your system can boot to a cd-r to start. Some older systems are a bit tricky but can be made to boot linux even if you have to use a floppy.

I'd say keep the Win98 if you are still using it.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

Thanx you two. Jefro yes it can.

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

hi,
how big is the hard drive.
If you have an empty primary partition other than the one containing windowz, you can leave windows as it is and set up a dual boot system. If the windows drive is the only available primary partition some repartitioning has to be done. However this too can be done while preserving the windows partition, provided the disk has a sufficient capacity.
Please provide some info on the current
partition layout

i've switched to Linux!

Then you should consider live cd's. Download maybe puppy or dsl and try them. They are a bit of a learning curve but not that far from win98. Next might be Knoppix to try or any of the many live cd's. (and there are plenty)

They will be very slow but you can get a feel for linux without any data damage to your system (usually).

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

You guys make me really excited about Linux.
Abdul Ahad, Now you ask the question, I have a 2nd HDD on my WinXP machine, 80GIGs capacity. You suggest I use that?
Jefro, can you give me a download link to these live CD's? Dawie

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Not a complete list but here are places to start.

http://www.frozentech.com/content/l...

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?re...

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

August 2, 2008

Re: New to Linux

Hi,

I am also new to Linux - have just used it a few months. I was able to revive an IBM Thinkpad T21 that had its Windows operating system corrupted. I was looking around for an answer, and discovered "Ubuntu" (www.ubtunu.com), apparently the most-popular distribution of Linux.

Ubuntu is provided as a free, self-installing CD. You download the installer (www.ubtunu.com) burn it to a CD, start the computer up, let the installer run, and (if you choose that option) it will wipe off all your old system files and other files. You will have a fresh, new system.

At first, I was confused about downloading the installer. I downloaded and burned to CD a few times, but nothing worked. I saw talk about verifying the 'checksum' of the downloaded files. This really discouraged me!

Then, I read that files downloaded using the 'BitTorrent' method automatically verify themselves - eliminating the need to verify a 'checksum,' or otherwise check the downloaded files for integrity.

That was the key. Once I installed a 'BitTorrent' client (http://www.bittorrent.com/download) and then found and downloaded the Ubuntu installer CD using BitTorrent, and then burned it to CD, the Ubuntu installer worked!

And it worked very well. Now I have Ubuntu 8.04 running on my laptop, it has many, many free programs available for download on its menus, and I feel like a computer whiz...

I am currently using Firefox as my browser, Open Office as my word-processing/spreadsheet program, and Thunderbird for email. All are free, and all available for download (or pre-installed) when you install Ubuntu.

Good luck!!

Kevin
Chicago

Thanx guys again. I can use the total disk capacity of my old win98 machine or I can install it on a separate HDD on my Win XP. I'm just not sure whether it's a primary drive or not. How can I check?

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

If you're gonna ask questions like that, you're probably not ready to do an installation. This thread has been going for almost 2 weeks...do you mean to say you haven't tried anything yet?

I suggest you just do as was explained earlier on in this thread...decide on which distro you wanna try, then download the ISO file. Once you've got it, use a program like ImgBurn to burn it to a CD. Then simply boot off the CD & run Linux directly from the disc. Get a feel for it & if you decide you like it, THEN you can worry about actually installing it to the HDD.

AFAIK, you haven't listed your system specs other than 512MB RAM. But just knowing that tells me that you can *probably* run just about any distro available. Ubuntu is the most well known but there are others that are a little more user-friendly...dare I say, more "Windows-like".

Have a look at Mint, PCLinuxOS & SimplyMepis.