ok

i wanna run suse on my pc..

i was thinkin of just buying a super cheap hdd and using it to boot instead of Dual boot..

if i did it this way, could i still get the media files off my other drives?

or would ntfs not like suse??

also, are there better choices?


anyways, what all would be involved in this little adventure?


thanks..

There is support for NTFS in the newer 2.6.x kernels. It's been there for quite some time, too, so you should have no problems there.
Using a speerate hard drive would be a good option, imho. If you're just getting into Linux, it can be scarry if your bootloader breaks. It happened to me a few times, so no Linux, no Windows (I fixed it from the Mandrake CD).

I've never used Suse, but I've heard good things about it and of course some bad, but those were from a guy who wasn't keen on learning anything about the OS. Suse is supposed to be able to run XGL and Compiz quite well and easily. HEHE (see here ->http://forums.pcapex.com/linux_os_pr...inux_ever.html. It also uses a lot of RPMs, which are great when you're getting started, and has nice tools to set things like hardware up.
Mandrake, now Mandriva, is also very good. I began with Mandrake, and I loved it. I found it very easy and friendly (it has a very nice control centre that makes things like setting up a Samba mount point doable in under a minute). Another you may want to look at is Debian. It has something called apt-get which installs RPMs and also grabs their dependincies, so there's no mucking around. Ubuntu and Kubunut are based off of Debian. Ubuntu uses Gnome and Kubuntu uses KDE. I personally don't like Ubuntu or Kubuntu.

Are you curious about Linux, or do you have another reason for wanting to try it?
I hope this helps some.

ive been wanting to try it for a very long time.. and saw some xgl vids and thought it looked wonderful.. not so much the gimmics of xgl, but the general OS..

itd also be nice to stray away from windows if at all possible..

im not a fan of windows, but i have this nice windows machine... so ... ya..

anyways..

o and whats with that 1 year subscription to suse crap on the website...

thanks alot..

j

Quote: Originally Posted by Fire Hawk There is support for NTFS in the newer 2.6.x kernels. It's been there for quite some time, too, so you should have no problems there.

You would have to recompile for it to actually work as the kernel hides the option by default and most distros will not include the support in their prebuilt kernels. It's still highly experimental, while it does work, there is still a high chance of data coruption. Same goes for other methods of writing to NTFS such as Captive-NTFS, Fuse-NTFS, and Paragon (Commercial NTFS support, costs 20 bucks). Allthough NTFS reading should work fine by default in SuSE.

EDIT: I'm not a big fan of SuSE, but you'd want to grab it from their community based project site, opensuse.org . Personally I use Arch Linux, but it's a bit more advanced and not recommended for people just getting their feet wet. I hear SuSE is good for begginners as with Ubuntu, I'd choose Ubuntu just because I can't stand SuSE's form of packages (RPM Hell).

I'll second what Piscikeeper said. Suse (despite being RPM based) is a quality distro. I've been running it for about 3 years as well, and should be able to help you out. You don't have to subscribe to Suse's support site if you don't think you'll need it, but if it's free, can't hurt! And yes, Xgl is very nice, but the main draw is that it's stable, has good hardware support, and will do most anything Windows can do. I ran a two-drive dualboot setup for about a year, and I think it's easier to maintain, as you can remove one drive and still use the computer, and whatnot.

Welcome to the club!

Shoot, I forgot to say this.
I dual boot (but that's not what I wanted to say) Winblows and Gentoo, and of course I need my files (music, homework, images, music) in both OSes. I have a second hardrive, an 80GB Seagate Barracuda that I have partitioned as one big FAT32 parition. I have never had any problems with this setup. Windows makes a bit of a mess on the drive with hidden files and restore point that are all invisible in Windows, so by default, you can see them in Linux. Not a big deal at all, though.

I've also never had a problem with NTFS support. I haven't used it very much, mind you.

After using Linux for a few days without Windows, using Windows is SUCH A PAIN! It's slow, and does stupid things. It does do some things very well, but the experience is not close to an eigth as great as Linux.

Quote: Originally Posted by Fire Hawk Shoot, I forgot to say this. I dual boot (but that's not what I wanted to say) Winblows and Gentoo, and of course I need my files (music, homework, images, music) in both OSes. I have a second hardrive, an 80GB Seagate Barracuda that I have partitioned as one big FAT32 parition. I have never had any problems with this setup. Windows makes a bit of a mess on the drive with hidden files and restore point that are all invisible in Windows, so by default, you can see them in Linux. Not a big deal at all, though. I've also never had a problem with NTFS support. I haven't used it very much, mind you. After using Linux for a few days without Windows, using Windows is SUCH A PAIN! It's slow, and does stupid things. It does do some things very well, but the experience is not close to an eigth as great as Linux.

I do the same thing with FAT32, the only problem you will find is working with files over 4gb in size you will run into problems. (FAT32 maximum file size limit is 4gb). But you're a Gentoo ricer, so you should know that . ZOMG Cflags! -O3-funroll-loops! (Sorry I couldn't resist)

awsome,
well ill have to get a drive now lol..

my hardware is all a little more than a year old now..

so im guessing that i will have support from suse

anyways, thanks!

you guys were the kick in the ass i needed to get on linux..

-j

Quote: Originally Posted by EvilClown I do the same thing with FAT32, the only problem you will find is working with files over 4gb in size you will run into problems. (FAT32 maximum file size limit is 4gb). But you're a Gentoo ricer, so you should know that . ZOMG Cflags! -O3-funroll-loops! (Sorry I couldn't resist)

I didn't know that! A few times I had problems with some large videos over that size, so they were broken up. It baffled me, but wasn't a big deal, so I forgot about it.
Thank you!

#nano /etc/make.conf
use="-gtk -gnome qt kde alsa teachmeIamstupid"

Phantommaggot, you're going to let us know how it goes, right?

Quote: Originally Posted by Fire Hawk I didn't know that! A few times I had problems with some large videos over that size, so they were broken up. It baffled me, but wasn't a big deal, so I forgot about it. Thank you! #nano /etc/make.conf use="-gtk -gnome qt kde alsa teachmeIamstupid" Phantommaggot, you're going to let us know how it goes, right?

Hehe yes, USE flags are the "real" reason people use Gentoo...
Just remember it's O3 the letter not the number

--teach-me-unix

Watching sh!t scroll by for hours makes me a Linux expert overnight! -Random Gentoo User

Quote: Originally Posted by phantommaggot ok i wanna run suse on my pc.. i was thinkin of just buying a super cheap hdd and using it to boot instead of Dual boot.. if i did it this way, could i still get the media files off my other drives? or would ntfs not like suse?? also, are there better choices? anyways, what all would be involved in this little adventure? thanks..

Just my opinion:
But stay away from those god awful RPM based distro's. RPM hell is such a pain to be in you end up forgetting what you were originally trying to install. Give Ubuntu a run, and after you get your feet wet and get better with the CLI move something like Gentoo. Doing a Stage 1 install of Gentoo will give you more power and knowledge when config'ing Linux that you'll be a pro after your first install.

Just my 2c though, If you try a distro and like it more power to you as you become one of the fold

could i dual boot two different versions of linux?

i really wanna try suse
but im guessing its rpm? based?

so Ubuntu will be my other choice.. and ill play with those two for a while.. does that sound like a good plan..

im gonna order a new HDD in a couple weeks.. (just got a 250 in the mail a week ago.. so.....)
and ill be all over it..

how hard is it to get programs for linux? is it harder for different linux versions.. suse, Ubuntu, etc?

and yes, ill def let you know how i progress.. if i like it enough im gonna build a whole computer for it lol
i really like those new lian li cases the cube ones.. it would be a good mod case.. if done right..

thanks again..

Quote: Originally Posted by boardboyd Doing a Stage 1 install of Gentoo will give you more power and knowledge when config'ing Linux that you'll be a pro after your first install.

Sadly, this is what most Gentoo users think....

unno, i completely forgot to ask..

will suse or Ubuntu have 64bit support?

Quote: Originally Posted by phantommaggot could i dual boot two different versions of linux? i really wanna try suse but im guessing its rpm? based? so Ubuntu will be my other choice.. and ill play with those two for a while.. does that sound like a good plan.. im gonna order a new HDD in a couple weeks.. (just got a 250 in the mail a week ago.. so.....) and ill be all over it.. how hard is it to get programs for linux? is it harder for different linux versions.. suse, Ubuntu, etc? and yes, ill def let you know how i progress.. if i like it enough im gonna build a whole computer for it lol i really like those new lian li cases the cube ones.. it would be a good mod case.. if done right.. thanks again..

Yes, you can dual boot two different versions of linux. For about a week, I had two different 2.6.x kernels and I dual booted between them. Of course, you can also dual boot, say Suse and Ubuntu and Windows. You just need enough space, and the installs do not all need to be on the same hard drive. You can dual boot two OSes from hda (your primary harddrive, say partitions hda2 and hda3) and one OS from hdb (you secondary drive).

It's not hard to get programs for Linux. There are a few popular ways to install programs, one being RPMs, which are packaged binaries (kind of like a bunch of EXEs in Windows). RPMs are easy to install, but as mentioned already, you can quickly forget what you have installed. You also need to wait for source code to be packaged into an RPM for you distro and archetecture, So you may not always have the latest versions of programs. Also, because the binaries were compiled on another system, they simply might install to the wrong place (this should not happen, but I have experienced it quite a few times).

Source code is the most popular way to distrubute programs for Linux and other systems. Source code usually comes in a tarball (a compressed archive, like a .zip file). Pretty much all source code has the same procedure to install it.
1. Extract the tarball (ie "tar xvjf sourcecode.tar.bz")
2. Move into the newly created directory and configure the source code ("cd sourcecode", "./configure") and enjoy the output.
3. Compile the source code ("make")
4. Get root permisions and install the source code. Ubutnu seems to use sudo to gain root access, but switching users works, too ("su" "make install")
To uninstall the program, simply becomes root or superuser or use sudo and "make uninstall" ("su" "make uninstall")

I believe that Ubutnu and Suse already have 64-bit versions. If you goto a Ubuntu download mirror, you can select your archtecture, http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/6.06/

ok so i got the knoppix cd (ill have the dvd tom.)
i figure it will work till i get a new drive...

so who knows how to get my internet working
i use a netgear 311 t wireless card

id also like to know how to get some video playing on there..

and i guess im gonna try to run both Ubutnu and suse on the same drive and keep the one i like, or both..
so ill be up for that in a couple weeks..

yay linux

Yes, both Ubuntu and SuSE should have CD images made for AMD 64-bit CPUs and, maybe Intel x64 chips.

I myself have only use Kubuntu, but I intend to try Fedora next summer.

As for getting that wireless card to work, there are plenty of tutorials on both the Ubuntu wiki, and the "Inter-web" in general. Here's some links to help you out:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...CardsSupported

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/in...howtopic=17930

The top one is for Ubuntu and the bottom for SuSE, so you have all your bases covered.

Happy Trails! And welcome to the neighborhood.

thanks!

i was actually looking for a way to get my wireless card working with knoppix ^_^
i found the netgear 111, and 311
but i have a 311t ?

same goes for video, will the knoppix dvd allow for some avi playing?

for that matter, will it save my settings for knoppix somewhere in my hdd, or am i boned everytime i kill the pc... ? O_O?

using knoppix has made me decide to just suck it up and order a hdd tuesday,
newegg here i come..

Quote: Originally Posted by phantommaggot thanks! i was actually looking for a way to get my wireless card working with knoppix ^_^ i found the netgear 111, and 311 but i have a 311t ?

I think I have the same card! It's PCI, right?
You need the madwifi drivers. The new ones are madwifi-ng, you also need wireless tools and support for wireless enabled and compiled in the kernel (most distros have everything remotely common compiled as a module, so you should have it).

http://madwifi.org/ - check the drivers out

getting the card running is very simple.
become root ("su")
root@whatever# modprobe ath_pci //this loads the kernel module
root@whatever# ifconfig ath0 up //bring up the interface
root@whatever# iwconfig ath0 essid NETGEAR2 //or whatever your channel name is
root@whatever# iwconfig ath0 channel xx //your channel
root@whatever# iwconfig ath0 key xxxxxxxx... //sets WEP key, if you have one. If not, ignore this
root@whatever# ifconfig ath0 192.168.0.21 //give your interface an IP address, one that will work on your LAN
root@whatever# dhcpcd ath0 //get a DHCP server
*incase you're wondering about the whole "ath" thing, the wireless card uses an Atheros chipset... So yeah... ath is an abreveation of Atheros... Pointless moment!

those are the basic steps to getting the card working.