Easist to install linux?

[Dawa13]

i am looking for a very easy to install linux distro. this is the first time to instal on my own. and can i make a partition smaller without deleting everything?

[filp]

I hear Mandrake is good for first timers. I think 9.0 has partition resizing tools during the install so you can make a bit of room to put linux on. Hardware support and system support is very good.

Seeya,
Filp.

[Palin]

The only caviot with partition resizing with mandrake I believe is it can't be NTFS. So as long as you are on a FAT32 partition you should be all set. If you have NTFS you will probably need to invest in a partition manager.

[pnuts]

Mandy is a dream to install if you dont have windows.Lindows and Xandos are aslo easy to intall but partioning is hard if you want to keep your windows files. if you want to use windows you will need to buy the software to change NTFS or a second hard disc for linux.

[tankinan]

Redhat's installer is great. It takes me < 20 minutes to get it completely installed on my pc.

[Dawa13]

how do i know if i have NTFS?
and if i do, how do i change it/ resize it to make room for the linux?

[sharth]

goto my computer

right click on the drive, and then go down to properties.

there should be SOME referance in there to either fat32 or ntfs.

[Palin]

IF you are running Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows NT4 then you might have NTFS, if you are running Windows 9x or Me its a FAT partition. Partition manager is good you can search for it on Yahoo. If you open up windows explorer and right click in the left pane on the C: drive and then click properties it will tell you what file system is installed.

[dimitrylevin]

If you have NTFS, see my sig.

[dimitrylevin]

Oh yeah, and I'd put in another vote for Redhat.

[pcghost]

Red Hat. It rules the Linux world. *ducks to avoid rocks thrown by angry debian users* :D

[Dawa13]

i like debian but i am afraid i will screw up install and redhat umm.. well enough said.
it is NTFS file type, i think because it said it would be faster in win2k install

[34cam]

I've found Red Hat to be excellent, I havn't tried any other distributions though so can't say whether it's the best

[cozmo]

try out yoper. It is on release candidate 3 right now. Very simple install. When the cd is done booting up you will come to a prompt. type "yoper" without the quotes and you are about 10 minutes away from a fully functional linux desktop. Two notes: it only runs on i686 or Pentium Pro or better, secondly only KDE 3.1 beta is installed, but it looks sweet. Also included is openoffice, plus a whole bunch of goodies. Their forum is down until they release 1.0 but you can find good documentation here for some minor caveats. Dual booting will require you to edit some files, the installer doesn't offer that yet. Also there is the matter of resizing partitions if you feel the need to. Take a look over at distrowatch.com. Yoper is #1 right now, but there are many fine distros. My 2 easy favorites are still Mandrake and Suse, but Yoper is nice too.

[nouse66]

Originally posted by cozmo
try out yoper. It is on release candidate 3 right now. Very simple install. When the cd is done booting up you will come to a prompt. type "yoper" without the quotes and you are about 10 minutes away from a fully functional linux desktop. Two notes: it only runs on i686 or Pentium Pro or better

doesnt i686 mean pentium 2 or better?

[sharth]

Originally posted by pcghost
*ducks to avoid rocks thrown by angry debian users* :D We don't throw rocks! we are much more civil than that! We throw flightless birds!

[Dun'kalis]

Debian users do throw flightless birds, its a fact.

Gentoo users, however, do away with those primitive weapons, and launch trained homing cows with rockets.

The easiest to install? That would be...

SuSE! Until somebody finishes the Gentoo Anaconda installer.

Which is likely never to be finished.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by nouse66
doesnt i686 mean pentium 2 or better? A pentium 2 is a pentium pro with MMX instructions added on.

In fact, every Intel processor since then has been the same instruction set (with perhaps newer enhancements to the floating-point/vector ops, like MMX, SSE, SSE2, etc., etc.), and maybe some speedups due to the number of pipe stages, number of functional units, etc., etc.

And clock speed increases, don't forget clock speed increases...

Every Intel proc since (and including) the P2 has been an i686. Not i686-backward-compatible, but really i686 (except for those FP/vector extensions, which I don't think count).

Then again, the AMD processors have been the same way. They've added some vector/floating point instructions, and sped up the core (advanced speculative caching, for one), but they haven't added any base instructions, either.

[BigFatJoe]

"Linux from Scratch" --> wouldn't that be the easiest then? b/c if you're a newbie, you're starting out from scratch...and I heard LFS is a heck of a learning tool. :D


Don't let them scare you away. Debian is a great distro. if you feel you have the time, go to www.debian.org and keep their install manual by your side. If you do that, you should be fine. You may have some problems configuring X under Debian. if you get that far in the installation, come ask some questions on this forum and/or do some googling.

Luck!

[Dawa13]

so should i try mandrake and screw all my hard work on 3-D stuff?
or make NTFS go smaller? or would my extra hardrive from my old computer work? it has linux on it.

[dimitrylevin]

Originally posted by Dawa13
so should i try mandrake and screw all my hard work on 3-D stuff?
or make NTFS go smaller? or would my extra hardrive from my old computer work? it has linux on it.

Make your NTFS partition smaller. Use Bootit, it is very easy to use and works very well. Includes good documentation. The link is on my sig.