Re: Former Zoo'er Newbie Needs Help

["W. Guy Finley" <wgfinley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Williams <awilliam@whitemice.org>
To: <klug@klug.armintl.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 1999 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: Former Zoo'er Newbie Needs Help


> Did you use computer back in the DOS or CP/M days?  Have you used ANYTHING
> other than Windows?  Sometimes you'll have to "unlearn" things you've
learned
> in Windows.

Yup.  Started out on the TRS-80 ("Trash 80"), had a Timex-Sinclair (with the
16k memory upgrade even!), did Wordstar on Kaypros (think those were early
DOS but might have been CP/M).  So I haven't been a GUI guy forever.  The
first puter I bought was a PS/1 back in '90 that was DOS.  My command line
skills are pretty good, looks like I'm going to have to learn a lot of them
because the Linux ones look foreign to me right now.

> > Here's my problem.  I'm very taken by Caldera since they have Partition
> > Magic (albeit a scaled down version) built in and would make it very
easy
> > for me to partition my existing drive as well as select my OS at
startup.
> > However, I'm not too crazy about being stuck with only KDE and the
limited
> > amount of extras Caldera has in their distro.
> >
>
> Understand.  I'd recommend RedHat as the best our of the box solution with
a
> reasonable number of gizmo's.  It is also the most common distro,  so
you'll
> have a lot of people here who know they're way around it.

Only thing bugging me about Red Hat is the $80 price tag.  Now, I suppose I
could get a CD from Cheapbytes, or beg for the latest BS Ware to be sent to
Illinois.  However, I think some hard copy instructions would do me a lot of
good.  Point well taken about being the most popular.....can always find
people on IRC talking Redhat, I've gone into the Suse room and not a word
was being said.

> If you're setup is pretty simple fips should not be a problem.  Just
follow the
> instructions.  LILO is only a problem if you have REALLY big drives or a
> strange BIOS configuration.  The boot partition needs to be in the first
540Mb
> of the drive (most of the time),  due to and IDE limitation.  One key to
fips
> is to a COMPLETE defrag of any partition you intend to shrink that
currently is
> used by Winblows.

Ahhhhh....this was the thing confusing me the most, about the boot partition
being in the first 540 MB.  I've also heard reference to being within the
1280 cylinder?  This was confusing me.  Is FIPS going to do this for me if I
specify it or do I have to do some playing around?

> > Any advice would be appreciated,
>
> Take good notes,  it makes it easier for us to solve and problems you run
into.

Hehehe, thanks.  As tempted as I've been to just plunk down my cash and
start installing I've been resisting so I don't screw this up.  One thing I
have to say, I find it very funny how people say that installing Windblows
is easy.  I remember installing Win95, and watching the installer crash
again, and again, and again.  I also remember recently working on my aunt's
machine that was original Win95 release -- not a single service pack or bug
fix on it......no wonder it wasn't working.

--Guy