[CLUE-Tech] Total newbie here....it's not easy being green ;)

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

Hi Ed,

> My name is Ed and I'm just getting into Linux a bit.  I have 2 questions 
> that I would appreciate any help with:
> 
> 1)I read somewhere that Linux will work on older equipment, and I was hoping 
> someone could tell me if my old machine would be adequate or not.  It's an 
> old Gateway with a 1Gb hard drive, Pentium 100 with either 128 or 256 
> memory.

Adequate is a relative term... Linux should install just fine. The
question is: What would you like to do with this machine? If it's just
using Linux as a internal Web server or gateway, or if it's just to get
to know Linux a bit, it will be fine. 

If you want to use it as a desktop machine for Web browsing and using
OpenOffice...then it's going to be a bit laggy. 

The other question is the video card -- how much video ram do you have?
You'll want at least 2 or 4 MB for a desktop machine, 8 MB or more is
optimal.  

I'd recommend Debian or Slackware for that machine. You can do a very
minimal install and add packages as needed. 

> 2)My current machine is an HP, 100 gb hard drive, Athlon 1.4 ghz and 256k 
> memory.  If I were to put Linux on here and keep windows, would I have to 
> partition my hard drive and all that, or would Mandrake/Red Hat help me out 
> with that upon installation?

Yes and yes... Red Hat or Mandrake will help, but you'll need to guide
them a bit. I wouldn't recommend letting them decide what size your
partitions should be. 

Mandrake 9.1, AFAIK, is the only one that will resize NTFS partions
right now, though -- so if you're using Windows XP + NTFS, you'll want
to try that. 

If you want to find out if the rest of the hardware is supported without
actually installing Linux, you could download Knoppix & run that first
-- I've found it to be really good for testing hardware. 

Good luck with it. 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net