On Thursday 25 September 2003 15:30, Maureen Crothall wrote:
Hello,
I've just this morning discovered this mailing list. I'm a total newbie to Linux, so I don't know if this is the appropriate list to write to, if not please tell me to toddle off. I've been looking at Linux for a few weeks, reading up on it and studying all the distros. I have Red Hat 8 on 2 CD's that came with the 'Linux for Dummies' book I bought, but I've also been heavily contemplating Lycoris, which seems to be very user friendly for total idiots like me. But today i received an email from Cnet with info on Suse's new version and I found myself following the link to their site and liking what i read.
Can you honestly tell me if Suse is OK for a complete newbie?
Hi, Yes, it is. That's how I started, and while I still don't know much I can get around mostly.
The installation is the part that scares me the most, I've tried hard to check all my stuff against hardware compatibility lists, Suse page for this seems to bugger up a lot, while trying to check burners it would suddenly start showing printers or sound cards.
I've not used this myself, but if you have a cd burner you should check out http://www.suse.de/en/private/download/suse_linux/index.html and look at the section Live-Eval. Find a suitable Canadian mirror to download the image from to avoid a long wait. You should be able to run a 'live' install from CD without affecting your hard disk, and get confirmation of whether your hardware is going to work. Having decided to go ahead, you should be able to resize your win partitions with ease, that was certainly my experience, but of course back up any data you care about first ... I found it took me a month or two to start really working on Linux, but I now boot Windows only if I absolutely have to - at home that hasn't happened for many months now. I hope you will find this list handy too, it's usually friendly and helpful. NB SuSE 9.0 must be due out any time now if you are thinking of spending your hard-earned cash.
Some opinions or help as to ease of install would be very much appreciated.
Very easy with 8.2 on the machines I've tried. Easier and a good deal faster than Windows, indeed. You get plenty of warning before it actually modifies the contents of your disk, so as well as trying the Live-Eval you could proceed a good way into the install without committing yourself ... HTH Fergus
At the moment I am using Windows 98SE, I have a 5 year old IMB Aptiva with a second hard drive added, the original is 4 gigs and the second one is 3 gigs. The memory is upgraded to 160. I'm thinking to do a duel boot for a while, if I have enough room for both. (Drive One = 1.38 used/2.61 free/ Drive Two = .821 used/ 2.14 free.) (Drive Two can fluctuant a lot depending on digital camera images and music being and not yet transferred to disc.) Thanks for any tips or support offered:O)
Maureen.
-- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk