[NBLUG/talk] Suggestions for newbie Linux Person

[Christopher Wagner]

I use Ubuntu at home and find it to be *very* easy to use and very
friendly.  I highly recommend it over Fedora..   However, if you are
going to install Ubuntu, stick with 5.04 for the time-being as 5.10 is
still in pre-release stages, I believe.

I installed Kubuntu for someone at the last installfest, the install was
easy and all the set-up went generally quite well (including the
dual-boot part between Win2k, Win 98, and Kubuntu).  I don't exactly
remember the specs of her machine, but I'm pretty sure it had 128 MB
RAM, and was running surprisingly well.

Regarding the method of accessing NTFS partition R/W, the method Lincoln
is referring to is CaptiveNTFS:
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

Thanks go to Kyle Rankin, for the demonstration of this quite useful
utility when giving a talk on the system recovery benefits of Knoppix. :)

Regarding XFree86 and x.org config files, when I moved from XFree86 to
x.org on my workstation at the office, I continued to use the same
config file, with no changes, without any difficulty whatsoever.

- Chris

Lincoln Peters wrote:

>On Sunday 25 September 2005 09:37 pm, Walter Hansen wrote:
>  
>
>>I want to set up a dual boot for my wife. I'd like a distro that looks
>>nice in x-windows and is easy to update and such. I was thinking fedora as
>>it seems simple these days, but thought I should ask for sugestions. This
>>is for her "new" PIII-700 that's running W2000Pro (already installed). 
>>    
>>
>
>I haven't played around with it a whole lot, but I've heard VERY good things 
>about Ubuntu as a desktop Linux distro.  I also seem to recall that at least 
>a few people (some of whom are on this very list) have been having rather 
>serious problems with recent versions of Fedora, and I don't think that your 
>wife would appreciate having to deal with problems.
>
>  
>
>>I 
>>was going to partition the second 20G drive 50/50 and put the distro on
>>the first and then make the second a FAT32 that would be accessable from
>>both. I set up the first as a FAT32 as NTSF had issues under Linux last I
>>remember. 
>>    
>>
>
>There is a trick used in Knoppix to safely access NTFS filesystems.  If I 
>remember correctly, it essentially runs the NTFS driver from Windows itself 
>in a sort of virtual machine, which delivers much better reliability, but is 
>a lot slower (virtual machines tend to have lots of CPU overhead).  You might 
>be able to set up the same thing on Fedora or Ubuntu, but I don't know how 
>(I've never had to set up a dual-boot system with Windows NT/2000/XP).
>
>  
>
>>She wants to poke arround with Linux and I wouln't mind playing 
>>with a desktop more. I generally play with servers in a shell enviornment
>>or webmin so I'm a little lacking on x-windows knowledge.
>>    
>>
>
>I am aware that both Fedora and Ubuntu can automatically set up an X-Windows 
>environment with most mainstream video hardware.  If you're worried that this 
>computer might have an obscure, unsupported (or very difficult to configure) 
>video card and/or monitor, try booting the computer from a Knoppix CD.  If 
>you get a KDE desktop without having to pass any special boot parameters, 
>then you can expect the same from Ubuntu or Fedora.
>
>If the video works under Knoppix but not under Fedora or Ubuntu, then I'm not 
>sure what you'd want to do.  There was a time when you could simply copy the 
>XFree86 configuration from Knoppix into another Linux installation, but since 
>neither Fedora nor Ubuntu uses XFree86 anymore, this trick won't work unless 
>the current version of Knoppix uses Xorg (the X11 system that Fedora and 
>Ubuntu now use).  I can't tell from the Knoppix website if this is the case 
>or not.
>
>  
>