I wanted to install linux on my computer, and i read some sites and magizines about it. they say that you should only install linux if you don't have a winbios. What is a winbios, and how do i tell if i have one?

[MikeV]

I'm not entirely sure what exactly defines a Winbios, but a quick search through the linux kernel archive messages brought up this post

"...Linux will normally use the IRQs assigned from the BIOS, so
it does matter. However, Linux does allow IRQ sharing without problems,
normally. And you don't use VGA interrupts in Linux."

I think you'll probably be okay. Depending on what exact bios you have in your machine, you may have some problems disabling USB, but I think that's pretty rare.

Mike


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It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

[This message has been edited by MikeV (edited 01-13-2000).]

I found out from another website that a winbios is a bios image that is on your hard drive in a non-dos partition, and acts as the bios as opposed to one soldered on the motherboard, i suppose...

[MikeV]

Oh, well in that case I doubt that it would matter...

I'd give it a shot and see what happens. Linux is very flexible, and will run on just about anything. It may not be pretty, at least not until you can get X configured and working w/ your video, but I've seen it running on a 386-16 w/ 8meg of RAM.

Mike

------------------
It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

I am going to try as soon as i partition my hard drive with partition magic 4.0. i am kind of worried that partitioning it will delete everything though.

[MikeV]

It won't.

Partition Magic is a Linux dual-booter's best friend.

It even has bootmagic, which gives you a cool little screen asking which OS you want to boot up.

Just make sure you install LILO to the superblock, not the MBR (superblock = first sector of the Linux partition)

Mike

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It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Lewis' Law: People will buy anything that's one to a customer...

Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to... to... uh.....