Linux Desktop

Well, ATI's Windows drivers have pretty much always lagged behind NVidia. Linux & BSD drivers even more so - NVidia PWNS on ATI for drivers in Linux, there's no comparison.

 

my linux mandriva 2005 LE box is now up waiting for some tiem to work on it

 

yeah i'm thinking of getting linux (probably mandriva), then creating a partition on my hard drive for it and installing it as well as windows so i can chose what to use. Just out of curiosity, can you get a version of msn messenger for linux? i am always chatting with my friends on there and i know some people dont like it but hey it saves money in phone conversations/text messages...

 

Of course. Typically for Linux you get one program that supports just about every protocol imaginable, it'll probably come pre-packaged with your distro (hell, even Slackware has it!).

http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

 

nice, now i need to get me a copy of linux, probably mandriva, i'll most likely get it delivered rather than downloading, any ideas about getting it in the u.k?
Edit:
Do you think that Mandriva will be the easiest to start with, as i am a linux n00b. (when i get it expect a lot of posts for help )

 

Yes, subscribe to Linux Format. They've got at least one full major distro on their DVD every month. In the last few months I've gotten Slackware, Gentoo, Madriva, Debian, SuSE, Fedora Core and several others for 6.50 a month, not a bad deal. This months mag has Debian and Fedora Core so you can get those easily enough.

 

cool, well i'll have to look into that thanx for the help, i'll now just go and read up on partitioning and installing so i know what i'm doing (i hope)

 

Cool. Good luck. If you need any help or have any questions at all let me know.

 

okay, i'm thinking of partitioning and allocating about 15Gb for linux, is there a way to do this when installing mandriva or would i have to do it beforehand using a partition program (i want to partition but want to keep data on winows partition) i currently have one partition for backup wth 4Gb on it and the rest is just for windows, i want to split the windows partition up and allocate some space for linux,

 

Personally I always do the partitioning by hand using fdisk (definitely NOT recommended unless you know what you are doing/can afford to screw everything up) though most of the newbie-friendly distros come with their own GUI-based partitioner. Your simplest method of setting up a dual-boot system is to wipe the hard-drive completely and start from scratch. There are tools for resizing NTFS partitions that again are probably included with your distro but there's always a danger of something going wrong so make sure you've got all the important stuff backed up.

Another simple method of setting up a dual-boot system if you don't want to have to re-install Windows is to install a second hard-drive and install Linux on that (but don't try to put Windows on the slave, it doesn't like it at all).

By the way if you've got a spare 4GB partition then maybe your best bet is to use that. Most default installations will fit on that quite happily and if you've got things like movies, mp3's etc, that take up a lot of space you can leave them on the Windows partition and still use them under Linux. Linux will quite happily read NTFS partitions (though there are some problems with altering it) so you could put a reasonable installation on the 4GB partition that should give you enough to play around with.

One last thing, once you've decided on the best method of partitioning your hard-drive let me know how you will do it and how much space you have. Partitioning a Linux drive is something of an art form and it's taken me years to work out the best way of doing it so I've got a few tips that will make your life easier in the future.

Before I forget, here's some links that might help you:

http://phoenix.csc.calpoly.edu/~kvoelker/cgi-bin/counter/cis122/dual-boot.cgi
http://geocities.com/thekornerr/book/en_04.html
http://www.linux-faqs.com/faq/misc/ntfs.html#3.0

 

thanx a lot, that really helps i'll let you know what i decide to do and when i decide to do it, it may not be for some time yet but i wil try to a.s.a.p

 

i will have a multi os computer , i will have windows xp, linux, windows server 2003, and when vista come out, windows vista.

 

cool, i read an article in a magazine about a guy who installed like 50 os's on his computer (most of them i had never heard of)

 

yea, i read about that on a website, they were mostly linux builds i think.

 

"hmmm i wonder which OS i should use today?"
lol what a choice...

 

well, devil linux is what i will use on my old computer for a hardware firewall when i get my main computer up and running properly, this computer i am using now (main computer) is my first priority as its the best out of the 2.

 

If I decide to try out an other OS I just get another computer. Much easier.

That's what I've got running, it's great!

 

cool, i'm going to try smoothwall for my hardware firewall

 

I've talked to Anti-Trend on building a firewall, and he's strongly recommended IPcop. I've used it and it's really easy, you don't need much hardware to run it (Not even a video card if you can boot without one)

 

That's right, IPCop is a 100% open-source fork from the Smoothwall project. It's like a free version of Smoothwall on steroids, and it requires no prior Linux knowledge to install & use. Excellent distro, highly recommended.