Do we.....?

[hard candy]

The thread (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119693)




It amazes me how complex people can make a question. Bog in the initial post basically said, "I'm chicken and I haven't thought to try out linux in 2 years of thinking about it, not even on an extra or old computer system. I haven't done any research so I'm going to try and get all these other people to convince me to try something."
Do you mean to tell me this guy has been waiting 2 years to try linux but is afraid to try because it might make him lose his windows installation? IF he had done ANY research at all, he would know that you can install linux and boot it up with a boot disk and don't even have to install a bootloader. And where has he been since Knoppix, Morphix, Mepis, etc live cd's have been out.
If you want a live cd with a partitioner included, I can recommend Mepis linux. One click installation also. I'm sure other live cd's have partitioners available. Take a gander at Gnuparted.
This is not rocket science and this is not a matter of life or death. Make a 5G partiton, install linux, boot it with a boot disk. Then if you like it install a bootloader, I know of at least 5- lilo, grub, smartboot,the NTloader, bootmagic.
Do we really need to convince people who have been afraid to try linux for the past 2 years (at least) to try linux? Why? Will we benefit? Will they benefit?
(Bon Bon says it's time for my medication, I'll be back after the initial effect wears off. )

[rbrimhall]

He seems a little cautious but... I remember "screwing" up my computer a few times when I started using Linux... I deleted linux but didn't know how to fix the MBR... now I have no worries at all about installing. I've "tweaked" my Linux installs to unusability several times and if I need to get online I just pop in the Windows XP disc and do the FIX MBR magic. Xp then boots like a champ (or is that chimp?)... anyways, I understand his caution but I learned by doing, breaking, sometimes fixing, etc. Hell, for a while I was installing Linux every other day to check out different distros... I think I've finally settled on MEPIS but I still keep the spare XP partition around... haven't booted to it in quite some time... but anyways, I digress. Basically, I'm not too worried about losing it from installing Linux... or reinstalling Linux... I guess until you've done it a few times it can be a little freaky?

[WayStar]

My first Linux install was botched because my video card wouldn't work with that release (RH 6.something). It was to be dual boot with Win98 taking 3/4 of the machine, and a Linux "playground" taking the remaining 1/4. Got online and found out that much newer versions existed (RH7.2) and got that instead. Viola!

That machine is my primary operating machine, and I've gone through several RHs and now Mandrakes on it. Haven'tt botched it to the point of not being able to boot "the other side" yet. To be honest, I haven't even tried booting the Windows side in a long time. It now occupies a tiny fraction of the whole system, and I usually run it's programs through WINE.

I, too, went through the distro-of-the-day phase, but I obtained an older second machine for that. Even now, I find installing Slackware to be a soothing way to unwind. :)

I suppose my point is that after 2 years of research, one should know well enough that it will usually take a few tries to get it right. If I install Mandrake with all defaults and leave it as that, it doesn't break. It's me that breaks it through excessive customization, but I'm getting better at it.

-Waylena, who likes her machines exactly the way she wants them.

[dboyer]

Do we... what? I'm so confused...!!

Anyways, I don't think he is out of line to be worried, only god and i know just how many os installs ive hosed playing around with windows/bsd/linux installers (and neither of us are telling). Its just I always tell people "the easiest way to learn /not/ to break things is /to/ break things repeatedly"

BTW, watch out for the windows installer... It likes to eat partitions (not sure why ;-)... maybe its a monster!)... I added an extra harddrive to my machine and was going to try an install/sysprep to get xp onto a system without a cdrom... weeell... I hit install, picked ntfs... and it asked again... so i picked ntfs again... well, the son-of-a-...gun operating system formated my win2k partition from my dualboot too...

case in point... i don't blame bog, but i certainly learned something from that... And he too can learn stuff from botched installs...

just can't be afraid to try, ya know?


On another note... and although I feel like the total dork at the LUG meeting who won't make eye contact with the 1 female in attendance...
"Waylena, who likes her machines exactly the way she wants them." <- yay for you.

[hard candy]

My medication finally wore off after Bon Bon threw some cold water on me (He also gave me a hot foot just to make sure).
My point was that why would someone wait 2 years to try linux? Surely he could have found out you can do a test install and try it? And you don't even need a bootloader installed. Now he has posted again in Installation asking 6 questions before he starts. Bon Bon and I are going now over there now.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I dunno... It was about 6 months between the first and second times I installed Linux.

I installed Mandrake 7.2 on a 233mhz K6-2 with 20MB of RAM. I fell in love with Gnome and Nautilus, but I hated how slow it ran.

For some reason, my first thought was, "screw this, it can't run on my machine.... Linux sucks." After all, I had heard you could run this on a 486! How little I knew then...

Then, I got a new box-- a nice 500mhz PIII somebody didn't need anymore. I installed Red Hat 7.3 on it (it was all I had at the time) and I FORCED myself to like it. Once I realised it was going to do a good job with this nifty Nautilus file browser I loved so much, I was happy. Then, I started to poke around, and I realized how powerful Linux could be. Now, even though I'm primarily a BSD guy, I haven't looked back since my second encounter with Free Software!

[psi42]

As far as I remember, pretty much every linux install (as long as I didn't do anything dumb and tell it to put 1.5gb of files on my 500mb /home partition (thought that one was /)) turned out very well.

However, my apprehension when putting that cd into my pentium 4 system was significantly less then when I put linux on an older machine with next to nothing to lose. It's not the installation itself, but the fear of the sudden crash...

I used linux for a month on that old pentium 1 before I finally installed it onto my new system. One reason was to get somewhat comfortable with a Unix-like before going full-fledged Linux. The second reason was to get somewhat comfortable with installing a Unix-like so as to have a good idea what was going on in the installation process. The third, unstated, reason was to ensure I was comfortable enough working with a Unix-like to deal with the "worst case scenario." That L 99 99 99 99 99 thing was annoying on the pentium 1, but on the new system, it would have been... really bad, I mean restricting rational thought bad. And that wasn't a worst case scenario. Thank God I don't have an LG CD-ROM drive. :)

My point is, it's all about gaining experience. With experience a linux install is easy. Without it, it is scary. Unless you are working on a computer previously destined for the trash anyway.

Once you get it installed and the bootloader working, you wonder what all the apprehension was all about. After all, the pengiun is your friend. Penguins do not sadistically destroy other OS'es partitions. (Unless you tell them to, in which case... :D).

In truth, I was never afraid of linux making my computer explode. However, I was afraid that windows might rear its ugly head and cause "complications."

~psi42

[AndrewLubinus89]

Originally posted by psi42



Once you get it installed and the bootloader working, you wonder what all the apprehension was all about. After all, the pengiun is your friend. Penguins do not sadistically destroy other OS'es partitions. (Unless you tell them to, in which case... :D).


~psi42
Haha, I got really confused when I tried to make mandrake resize my ntfs partition and it said "warnig all data on disk will be destroyed", I thought wait a minute, this is supposed to resize it! Turned out I had some weird data at the end of the partition.