>I need some help with Linux, I havnt installed it yet but I have heard
>good things about it. I have been looking for the installation file(s)
>all over the place! I have found about 30 of them all separated into
>gzip files which I dont have a clue what that is.
Your best bet is to ignore the files you find on the internet and to
buy a book at a good technical bookstore that has a CD-ROM in it
containing everything you need. The book will give you all of the
info you need to get started and the CD-ROM will contain the whole
system plus many applications and utilities. Later, you can use the
internet resources to improve your system. Popular "distributions"
are those offered by Slackware and RedHat. Look for current copyright
dates in the books in order to have a recent system. Any distribution
will probably work to begin with. The latest Slackware is version
3.0, but version 2.3 is an OK way to start also, particularly since it
is available in a very good book by Patrick Volkerding and others
aimed just at getting the system installed and usable.
Quote:>I am wondering if DOS
>and Windows programs can run on Linux and what is the latest version.
Many DOS and Windows programs run on Linux via emulation. It is,
however, very easy to have Linux, DOS and Windows coexist on the same
machine with you having your choice of which system to boot to at any
time.
Quote:>Can my computer : 120Mhz Pentium, 16 megs RAM, 1Gig HD, the works, run
>smoothly on Linux? I sound really dumb right now because I dont know
>anything about it, no, I am not from AOL. I know a lot in DOS though,
>but I am looking for another challenge. If anyone can help I would be
>greatful.
It depends on the details of your hardware, but it is very likely that
it will work fine. One key issue is the graphics card you have and
how well it is supported by the X server in the distribution you buy.
A good place to start is to look at the HOWTO documents: the following
is an excerpt from the HOWTO index posted today.
------------
HOWTOs can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from the following sites:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO
ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO
as well as many mirror sites
<ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/MIRRORS.html>.
You can also browse HOWTOs in HTML format
<http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/> on the World Wide Web. Many
mirror sites <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/hmirrors.html> also mirror
the HOWTO WWW files.
sunsite.unc.edu is heavily used, so please use a mirror site if
possible.
-------------------------
The HOWTO index is currently posted (today) in the
comp.os.linux.hardware usenet group - probably in some of the other
groups also.
Be prepared for some confusion and frustration. However, if you like
mucking with computers, Linux is a great system, providing many
features not available in the commercial OSs. Of course, it also
lacks many of the fine features of those systems. But, you can have
the best of both.
Good Luck.
<< Gerry (Gerry Tool)
by