A morning with Linux

I have installed Mandrake on my PC on an old 4GB hard drive I found.

The installation was painless as easy as XP, it even automaticaly made the partitions for me although creating them manualy is no hardship.

Once installation was complete I downloaded FIrefox 1.0 expecting it to be quite tricky to install. I clicked on the file and then an installation program appeared the installation was almost as easy as WIndows.

The internet worked automaticaly as I have DHCP enabled on my router so it auotmatically detected my DNS settings. The video card (ATI 9600SE), sound card (built in motherboard one) and network card (cheapo £3 thing) all were detected automaticaly.

It really is a great way to get into Linux providing you have a fast enough internet connection that will let you download a 720mb ISO file.

 

I was going to say well done, but since it was that easy I won't .

I've only played with SuSE and as you found with Mandrake, it's pretty straight forward to install. The only problem I've ever had with it (version 8.1 BTW) is that I couldn't get Java to work with Mozilla. Konquerer works fine but I don't like the fonds.

How does did perform? I think you said XP ran very slowly on this PC.

Edited to add:- A colleague of mine who's a Linux geek has recommended Gentoo. He said it's the most advanced flavour of this OS, offering among other things, automatic updates just like MS.

www.gentoo.org

Just in case you'r interested

 

That PC with XP was my uncles, I have a laptop of the same spec which I put Mandrake 10 on it, it was very slow and basicaly unusable. This morning I installed the same OS on my main desktop PC. Athlon XP 2000, 512MB RAM. It performs quite well but I can't make a direct comparsion with XP because the hard drive linux is installed on is much slower.

 

you always remember the first time

Well done, you might like to browse this thread Would like toi try Linux to be found in the Mozilla Tech Forum as it is about trying Linux on kit a bit like yours. It offers some help and advice to the first time installer / user in a not too technical way.
Hope it helps.

 

I have Gentoo running at home I woulldnt say its the hardest infact bar its diffaculty of doing general admin things it has some features like portage (the package managment system for installing software) that make it one of the easiest to use.

ps. for anyone wanteing to try linux i would really recomend knoppix as a boot to try it out and see what you think, it requires no install it runs of ram and has a hell of a lot of software included.

 

laptops are allways sluggish compared to there counterpart desktop. mainly becuase of so many other thing that are needed to consider.