I have an AMD Athlon computer that resembles Frankenstein: It is built
from pieces-parts that were never really state-of-the-art. When I load
Windows onto that computer, the installer asks me a couple of
questions, I click a few buttons, and the Operating System loads. When
it is done, everything works.

I have tried to use several different distros of Linux in the past but
none of them will load into my computer. Only two of the Live CDs ever
worked on my computer: Ubuntu and Linspire 5. Admittedly, my last
attempt to load a Linux distro was a long time ago and things have
hopefully changed since then. I really want to use Linux, but I can't
get it to load.

Does anyone know of a Linux distro that loads as easily as Windows?

Anonymous wrote:
I would suggest Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper (not 6.10 Edgy, and use the Alternate
CD instead of the Desktop CD), SimplyMEPIS 6, or PCLinuxOS. You need to
have 256MB RAM as an absolute minimum anymore.

All Linux distros install *differently* than Windows. You will be asked
a number of questions during the installation process. That being said,
there's nothing "hard" about any of it. Frankly, it's refreshing to have
the OS ask how you want it installed, rather than the OS assuming it
knows best. Unless, of course, it does. If that's the case, you might
not be ready for Linux.

--
Mark Warner
lose .inhibitions when replying

Anonymous wrote:
That means that you know how to change from one hard disk to another.
I have never tried installing linux on a hd, and when I try it I will
disconnect my windows hard disks and install linux on another hd. Don't
trust linux to preserve your windows installation. Your homemade
computer is probably no less of a problem than other computers, no
matter which computer you have you have to try out which linux version
works with your hardware.

Knoppix is the easiest live-cd I know of, it works like windows. And it
works with practically any hardware.
It is made to work well as live-cd, and you can save the settings on
some empty space on your windows hard disks. Knoppix knows about
windows and will not destroy your windows installation. In Knoppix you
are not forced to use a password.

Mepis is also good as live-CD.

PClinuxOS and Linspire live-cd's have also loaded on my computer, but
are slower.

Get the latest versions of Knoppix, Mepis, and a few other live-cd's
and try again.

My next plans for using linux is to learn how to start Wine so I can
run at least some of my windows programs.

But I will need an extra computer to install linux on, so I can read
manuals about linux on my windows computer while I am trying things on
the linux computer.


--
Roger J.

In message <DKudnc8uZ_ZvENPYnZ2dnUVZ_sGdnZ2d@comcast.com>, Anonymous
<noemail@noisp.com> writes
and out so many times it practically jumps when I rattle a screwdriver
at it. This has one advantage for linux, none of the bits are cutting
edge technology and are more likely to have support

Slackware, SUSE on variuous computers, none of them worked 100% on
install.

3.7 (in beginner mode), then they changed the installer (no beginner
mode) and my cable modem stopped working. Latest version is still worth
a try.

Now gone via Mepis 3.4 to Mepis 6 and everything works - usb printer,
usb scanner, usb cable modem, CD/DVD drives, soundcard, all without any
problems.
Mepis can put grub boot loader where you want it, hard drive or boot off
a floppy. Unlike other distros (IFAIK) you can change this at a later
date. I have it on a second hard drive so that Mepis is completely
separate from my windoze installation.

Although the Mepis permanent installation is really easy I would
recommend setting up the linux partitions first, minimum 4 - 5 Gb for
the OS plus a 500 Mb swap partition. The installer will find these and
it saves any possible traumas / screw ups. Get the gparted live cd to
move / resize your existing partitions.
Only other thing I found was to run my old matrox video card in basic
(vesa) mode - advanced mode worked but was not wonderful. 1024 x 768
works fine on a 17" lcd monitor.

best of luck

--
rich

Anonymous <noemail@noisp.com> wrote in
newsKudnc8uZ_ZvENPYnZ2dnUVZ_sGdnZ2d@comcast.com:

Linux is not designed to be as easy as Windows, but it is making
strides. Check out this blog by someone who is learning about Linux. He
is a life long Windows guy. http://my30daysoflinux.blogspot.com

--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
El Gee Www.mistergeek.com <><
Know Christ, Know Peace -- No Christ, No Peace
Remove .yourhat to reply
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ar wrote:
That same someone would have the same problem loading XP while
preserving an install of W98. The difficulty is not with Linux.

--
Mark Warner
lose .inhibitions when replying

"Anonymous" <noemail@noisp.com> wrote in message
newsKudnc8uZ_ZvENPYnZ2dnUVZ_sGdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
Over the past few months I've downloaded and tried out approximately 25
Linux distros on my auxilliary computer, using a spare hard drive, and the
single best one has been Mepis 6.0. It runs as a live cd and it found all
my hardware right away, including the wireless card. Of course, whether it
will have native drivers for all your hardware is anyone's guess. The only
way to know is to download the live cd and try it. If it does work for you,
then you can click on the install icon on the desktop and Mepis will walk
you through the installation. I found it easy to follow. The only small
glitch I have found is that the screensaver does not function. There's a
fix for it cited in one of the Mepis discussion groups but I have not used
it. Otherwise, for me at least, Mepis 6.0 has been ideal. Hope this helps
you. JG

Mark Warner wrote:
Also, Linux distros will probably offer you the opportunity to let them
decide how to partition things if you are prepared to have them wipe
your drive.

IMO, some good home-brewed advice is: install Linux on a spare machine,
don't muck about with Windows paritions or Live CDs. Don't have a spare
computer? Then get a second-hand one for free from
http://www.freecycle.org/
It wont be cutting edge, for sure. There's plenty of computer stuff
offered. Maybe splash out cash for a new hard drive, and some memory.

I've installed the server version of Ubuntu on my spare; which I use for
taking daily backups. I'm also running an internet proxy (Squid) and
filter (squidguard) on it, which I connect to from my Windows box. Squid
does thing like DNS caching; and my subjective impression is that it
does speed up surfing (lame joke: why do they call it surfing the web
when what you're really doing is typing?).

På Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:21:00 +0100, skrev Anonymous <noemail@noisp.com>:

<snip>
Admittedly, my last
Mandriva.
I've tried som distros. This is the only one that hasn't let me down (the
last two years).


--
JP Loken
http://www.opera.com/mail/

Your mother was just in this newsgroup looking for you. She went to the
store and bought a stronger leash than the one you recently broke.

I remember you. You're the guy on TV asking all of us to vote in favor
of gay marriage...

Mark Carter wrote:
Especially if you don't have a good grasp of disk partitioning. Not
understanding how that works is the single biggest problem a newbie
wanting to try Linux is going to have. It's ignorance of disk
partitioning and disk layout that causes an install to be overwritten,
not Linux.

I learned my way around Linux the hard way, doing my homework, reading a
lot of newsgroups, and asking a lot of questions. It wasn't without its
headaches, but it's been a worthwhile endeavor.

Linux has its shortcomings, and Windows is a fine OS, there is no
question. The real question should be whether or not you're willing to
put forth the effort to get out from under Microsoft's thumb. There will
come a time when you will be forced to chose between owning your
computer, the software you paid for, and your data, or just using the
machine to access the space and services you've rented from Redmond. Me,
I think it's worth the effort to keep what's mine.

--
Mark Warner
PCLinuxOS v.93
Registered Linux User #415318
....lose .inhibitions when replying

El Gee wrote:
Thanks for the link. Your friend seems to be doing well. He's
experiencing that same combination of WTF! and Cool! moments that I
recall so vividly ('cause they weren't that long ago).

Hopefully he'll get to experience how Linux can take you beyond just
being "like Windows" before his 30 day trial period comes to an end.

--
Mark Warner
SimplyMEPIS 6.0
Registered Linux User #415318
....lose .inhibitions when replying

Anonymous wrote:
dv8000z), and tried; Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora Core 4, Fedora Core 5,
SUSE 10.1 Enterprise Edition and Mandriva 2007.

I have to say that other than in not having a driver for my wireless
card (which no one has), the install was totally painless and in a
lot of ways nicer than WinXPpe64 (still haven't got sound for
WinXPpe64).

I was very impressed, and use my computer as a tri-boot (WinXPpe,
WinXPpe64 and Mandriva 2007) and everything is working great.)

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

"When hope is lost . . . the spirit dies."
-- Lao Tzu

http://blog.tlerma.com/

Mark Warner wrote:

Burn the witch. Burn the witch.

Linux is great for servers - even if you're just a home-hobbiest who
wants to tinker about with web pages, a little newsgroup, or whatever. I
wouldn't even begin to think about using Windows for that kind of thing.

From a user viewpoint, though, there are at least as many apps for
Windows as there are for Linux. All the really good apps on Linux work
on Windows.

The thing about Windows, and one reason I think it will be around for
another 20 years, is that it's like the Dark Side of The Force. It's so
seductively tempting. Take MS Office. You get instant results. There are
downsides, for sure, but you tend to overlook them in the first instance.

Office suites. Really, I'm not suprised people use Office when Open
Office is the best that Open Source has to offer. I tried it a few years
back, and it was as slow as hell. And it uses Java. Of all the freaking
complexity. Yes, I know you can turn it off; but it should come
preconfigured out of the box.

Then there's LaTeX. It's been many a moon since I've had a go at that.
It's chief advantage is that, unlike Word, it actually sets out your
document correctly. And it cross-references equations correctly, too.
OTOH, good luck setting it up in Windows, and working out what the
commands are.

On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:36:33 +0000, Mark Carter wrote:

Linux is great for the desktop, too. Just ask the many corporations
that now use it on their office machines.

Now ask yourself *why* so many Linux applications are compilable for
Windows, but virtually no Windows applications are compilable for
Linux? I don't just use Linux because of the plethora of great free
applications. I use it because in open-source land, users matter. The
pleasant, caring-and-sharing atmosphere here beats h*ll out of the
oppressive screw-the-consumer tone of Windows.

OpenOffice only hit 1.0 last year, so your experience two years ago was
with a beta (or maybe even alpha) version. And OpenOffice is written in
C++, not Java.

Not too surprising - after all, LaTeX is *the* typesetting language for
scientific and engineering documents.

LaTex is meant to create documents based on the structure of your text so
yes, by its nature you have to embed commands in your text to tell it all
about that structure. If you'd rather use a WYSIWYG word processor to
generate LaTeX output for a publisher, then there are many GUI word
processors that can save to LaTeX format. Or you can use a LaTeX front end
such as Lyx, or you can save as one document type and use a filter to turn
that into LaTeX.

On 06 Nov 2006, rich wrote

Alas, the live CD of Mepis 6.0 didn't talk to my printer (a Canon
Pixma 2000).

I'll poke around with it some other time to see if it's resolvable.


--
Cheers,
Harvey

arachnid wrote:

Not sure if that's a typo, arachnid but, OOo1.1 was released back in the
middle of 2003. 2.0 was released last year though.


technically, OOo may be written in C++ but it as a "modern" office
suite, it's pretty much crippled w/o Java.

fwiw,
-Craig

On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:44:48 +0000, Craig wrote:

It was a typo - when I think Official Release, I think "1.0". OpenOffice
hit 1.0 when the only thing that worked was the word processor, and IMHO
it wasn't a very impressive one. Giving it the 1.00 version number was
more an announcement that it was finally minimally usable rather than that
it was complete. The big 2.0 release last year was when it was finally
judged (by its developers, at least) as ready to take on MS Office.

I use a non-Java OpenOffice on my FreeBSD partition and it works quite
well. It is missing a few trivial features, and Base isn't there at all,
so maybe you couldn't call it a modern office suite. However the fact that
it's so usable without Java shows just how little of OpenOffice's speed is
determined by Java code. On a system with Java and Base, you can replace
Base's HSQL database engine with a non-Java engine like MySQL. At that
point Java is just running the graphical front end.

BTW all of this may be irrelevant because Java's fans claim that it's
speed is now within 10% of C/C++ in a typical application. It could well
be that the reason Base is slow is not its Java database engine, but the
overhead of the engine's XML database format.

In message <Xns9874A6F735212whhvans@80.5.182.99>, HVS
<harvey.news@ntlworld.com> writes
Some suggestions for the next time you fire up the live CD

Open the System -> Info Center menu then USB devices
see if the printer is listed.

Set up the printer with an alternative driver.
That's System Configuration -> Peripherals -> Printer
then Add Printer which brings up a "wizard"
The Pixma ip4000 is listed and must be worth a try, also a quick search
on google suggests that the BJC 8200 or the S400 should work.

Its going back a bit but I don't think I ever set up my printer, an old
HP960c, in 'live-mode'. I waited until I had a permanent installation.
AFAIK you need to be 'root' to install a printer and have disk space to
save the settings.

Another suggestion is to consult the mepis user forum, usually someone
there with the same problem.

--
rich