[Anti-Intel2]

Hello all,

I had a buddy give me three different distros of Linux... Redhat 9(which he can't see to get loaded), Mandrake 9.1, Slackware 8.1, and Knoppix KDE 3.1 (Runs from CD). I cant decide on which to load. I am running an 850 Athlon Thunderbird w/ Win2k, Nvidia TNT M64 32 Meg Video card, Soundblaster Value, Maxtor HD, LinkSys Ethernet card (DSL), U.S. Robotics Modem, Creative CD-ROM (52X), Liteon CD-RW and 384 MB RAM.

Cant decide. Plus where can I find a Hardware compatibility list?

This will be a dual boot system with a single partitioned HD. What bootloader to use? I have several questions before I dive into this.

[codejockey]

You might try Knoppix first to see if you like Linux at all; since it runs from CD, you don't have to worry about dual-booting, choice of bootloader, etc. -- not to mention mistakenly wiping out your Windoze installation.

Both Mandrake and RedHat have very good reputations for ease of installation. Slackware is much more hands-on, and positively primitive in its installation methods (in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I run Slackware by choice). RedHat requires a few tweaks to support things like MP3 file playback and NTFS filesystems, and generally is a more customized distribution.

Either RedHat or Mandrake would be a fine choice for a new Linux user. Hardware compatiblity information is usually available at the home page of each distribution.

Hope this helps.

[bloodraven]

(which he can't see to get loaded)

have the same problem ..tried to upgrade RH 8.0 to 9 .. cd doesnt boot ...

[codejockey]

There could be several reason s your RedHat CD won't boot: (1) if burned from a download, it may be corrupt (either because the download did not complete properly -- i.e., md5sum did not match -- or because the burn failed). (2) if burned from a download, the .iso file (image) should have been used; a zip archive (for example) won't work. (3) if you look at the CD and you see one big file instead of a filesystem, the CD was burned incorrectly; some CD-writer software does not automatically detect that an image file is being used, and just does a copy.

Hope this helps.

[bloodraven]

well i burned it from iso file but i usually do it like this .. i use deamon tools and i mount this iso .. then i just cd copy it using fake cd rom as source and cd writer as destination..

[lynch]

If you can still login to Redhat 8 try this(as root):
for a cd-r disk:
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=x -eject -v nameof.iso

dev=0,0,0 is the scsi designation of your burner;do a cdrecord -scanbus to get yours.Speed=x is burner speed where x is ,for example, speed=40 for a 40x burner.

for a cd-rw disk:
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=x blank=fast -eject -v nameof.iso

Also,go back to where you got the iso files and get thier corresponding md5sums.Then do a md5sum pathto/nameof.iso and see if they match.

HTH
lynch

[bloodraven]

thanx mate