[NCLUG] Help requested in learning Linux

crucial crucial at elm.he.net
Tue May 14 14:32:14 MDT 2002


I have a working ~1.5G HD you can have, if your machines will recognize
it.  In my experience, Mandrake was a little more finicky about
museum-quality hardware than RedHat is.  For that matter, even my redhat
installations were problematic on my old pentium 166 -- so maybe you will
find it worthwhile to get a castoff box to play with.
	I have been using and like KRUD, the redhat-based distro
put out by tummy.com here in FC.  It's nice to have the easy-update
krudutils to keep on top of things.  I've seen mandrake run on a friend's
machine, and it looked easy to put together, but I have reservations about
making it run on the 486.

--Rich


On Tue, 14 May 2002, Marcio Luis Teixeira wrote:

> > Cheapskate: I'm open to purchasing more capable hardware if what I have
> > doesn't really offer the type of power needed to run Linux.  One of the
> > many pages I've read on Linux states that I need at least 500 megabytes of
> > hard disk for a "standard" install.  I can deal with that, but I thought
> > that Linux was more efficient and stable than MS Windows and would give me
> > the equivalent performance on a computer with a earlier hardware.  Perhaps
> > I am wrong.
> 
> The minimum install with no graphics GUI fits rather comfortably in 250MBs 
> (and you'll want to have 250MBs of free space, for files and stuff), but such 
> a minimum install is usually only good for firewalls or server type 
> applications. Without the GUI tools, you won't get much satisfaction from it 
> and maintenance is very difficult (since you don't have any of the GUI tools
> to help you).
> 
> It is true that a "standard" linux install may require a lot of space, but 
> you get a lot for it. Unlike Windows, a "standard" install includes hundreds 
> of applications, tools, documentation, some developer tools, text editors, 
> image viewers, etc. It isn't fair to compare one to the other.
> 
> I recommend at least 1GB or perhaps even 2GBs drive. Don't think this is 
> incompatible with being a cheapskate -- you can find a 2GB IDE drive on eBay 
> for under $15 and people will practically pay you to take the 1GB 
> "paperweights" off their hands!
> 
> A second alternative is to combine the various drives you have onto one 
> machine. You should be able to put two IDE cards on your machine (assuming 
> you have enough IRQs) and each can support two drives.
> 
> Anyhow, that's my 2 cents worth.
> 
> Hope it helps,
> 
> Marcio Luis Teixeira
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