Welcome to Lonewriter's LINUX Page



How Microsoft Sold Me LINUX


In a nutshell, here are some of the advantages of this operating system:


* LINUX is FREE over the 'Net, cheap if bought from Red Hat Software, Caldera, or Slackware. LINUX runs fast even on old, outdated equipment

* LINUX is 'open source' - meaning no more 'black box' software

* Corel sells its word processor written for LINUX - $49 as opposed to $189 for the Windows version

* Many, many people all over the world are contributing to the code base

* Many good applications are available for free or low cost on the 'Net including office suites, C and BASIC and other programming language compilers, ...

* SOME immunity to viruses over Windows/DOS - although LINUX is still vulnerable to worms, Trojan horses and 'buffer-overflow' attacks. Clearly, however, the Word Macro attacks would be no worry here.


I bought books at Barnes and Noble Bookstore which contained both Red Hat's 5.1 version as well as Caldera's 'Open LINUX Lite'. Both are good and both have their strengths and weaknesses. I have installed LINUX on a 386, 20 MHz system as well as a 486, 66 MHz system. It ran well on both, although it took several attempts on both to get it installed because I was lacking certain knowledge in. Of the three distributions I have mentioned, I have since found that only Slackware 4.0 detected the Creative Labs(R) 8X CD ROM drive on another old system of mine. This system had a 'Scorpion' brand of CD ROM controller/sound card which Caldera and Red Hat apparently don't have drivers or boot images for.

It is beyond the scope of this work to offer a complete tutorial about LINUX, but I make some comments here based on my actual experience. The following are my suggestions and comments, gleaned from personal experience and advice from other people. I assume NO LIABILITY for any negative consequences arising from the use or misuse of this information.

Which LINUX do I use?? This is up to you. Red Hat, Caldera, and Slackware are legitimate names in the business. Red Hat 5.1 is slightly easier to install for a rank beginner, but Caldera IMHO gives the experienced user more control over the actual installation process. Slackware, in my experience, is friendlier with older equipment. They all use the RPMs (Red Hat Package Manager) which aids greatly when installing additional software or modules.

Read the Book carefully before getting started. Let me repeat: READ CAREFULLY before doing ANYTHING. Don't mean to yell, but this is important. Then note the following caveats that one may NOT learn from reading the book:

Partitioning Some texts discuss designating up to 4 separate root, user ... partitions for LINUX. This can easily confuse the beginner and is, I have found, not necessary. Set up a SWAP partition and one more appropriately-sized LINUX 'NATIVE' partition per the instructions that came with your software. For a typical installation of LINUX with all the tools and goodies, you need a 16-32 MB SWAP partition and 200-450 MB for the 'NATIVE' partition. you can get by on much less, but at the expense of the graphical desk-top and many of the other tools and goodies. Also, if you intend to keep DOS or Windows on the same drive, install these and their partitions FIRST, other-wise LINUX will overwrite those file systems.

Boot Set-up You will need to configure the boot loader - whether that be LILO which comes with LINUX or some other proprietary one such as System Commander(R). I've used LILO, although you can really mess things up with it if something goes wrong with the installation. It can render your hard drive unbootable. The LILO configuration menu will ask you whether you want to write to the MBR (master boot record) or to the beginning of the bootable LINUX partition. While in ignorance I wrote mine to the MBR, it got corrupted the first time and I had to repeat the installation. It works great now - I can boot to LINUX or to DR DOS - it is recommended by myself and others to NOT write to the MBR if you can avoid it. Best to write it to the beginning of the bootable LINUX partition.

Hardware Inventory Document your system's hardware and configurations as completely as possible prior to installing LINUX - you'll be prompted for information regarding video and network cards, type of CD ROM drives, IDE vs SCSI Hard drives, ... Bear in mind that if you have SCSI drives, your system may give you a message of 'No hard drives present' when you check your CMOS settings. You and capacity of your SCSI hard-drive as well as any info regarding the SCSI controller. I picked out a SCSI CD-ROM driver for my cryptically marked drive by trial and error, succeeding in detecting it after three tries. If you are using IDE devices, LINUX should not have too much trouble auto-detecting your CD-ROM provided it is ATAPI IDE or ISO 9660 compliant. Mitsumi, Sanyo, and Sony CD-ROMS generally are a safe bet. I had a Mitsumi IDE
CD-ROM drive on one system that LINUX found without difficulty after I entered the brand
name at the prompt during the pre-installation set-up.

Mount points Every drive or device in LINUX has what is referred to as a 'mount point'. This is simply a directory to which a floppy drive or CD-ROM is attached. /mnt or /dev are two common mount points. This can be VERY confusing to a newbie when the literature provided tells you that the mount point is in the /dev directory and it REALLY is in /mnt. This happened to me when I used Caldera 'Open LINUX Lite'. A friend told me about /mnt. Once in the /mnt directory, I found the listings 'Floppy' and 'CDROM'. So, if you don't find it in the expected place, look elsewhere. You can actually re-configure it later to mount anywhere you want.

'Files' Every drive or device in LINUX is 'file'. A modem is a 'file', ... This bit of info will help you to decipher some of the literature.

If you are new at LINUX, purchase the book "LINUX for Dummies". I did, and it's an invaluable quick reference guide when one is trying to get a job done and needs to look up a command. It is also easier to read than most other texts on the subject, as it assumes no previous knowledge of the subject.
Text Editors
The most common text editors on UNIX/LINUX systems are vi and Emacs. Emacs has TONS of features and requires TONS of disk space(many MB for the application) vi is universally found native on nearly every UNIX/LINUX system in existance. While its interface is somewhat counter-intuitive, it is not difficult to use. It is well to learn vi because it's executable file is tiny and easily fits onto an emergency repair floppy. This can 'save your bacon' if you are forced to manually edit configuration files after a crash. Basically there is one thing to keep straight: You have two modes - a COMMAND mode and an INSERT mode. This is the hardest thing for newbies to remember when using vi. When you start vi, it appears on your screen running in the COMMAND mode. To type or edit text, type the lowercase letter 'i'. Now, type your test or do whatever editing you want. When you're done, save it by hitting the ESC key to return to vi's COMMAND mode. Then type :w to save it. Type :q to exit from vi. Read your 'LINUX for Dummies' book for more details.

Email Lonewriter

lonewriter@altavista.com
This page Revised 02/28/2001

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