How about Janus (being the two faced one, if I recall) for a dual O/S system?

I have that STB Velocity 128 video card. It is based upon the nVidia Riva 128 chipset and Eric is right in that it screams with games, but I have found that it is very touchy about drivers. I have a very early STB board with the first release video BIOS and it simply will not work with some recent driver revisions and/or some applications (Microsoft’s Flight Simulator is problematic with recent drivers.)

Normally I wouldn’t bother you about this, but if you’re going to play Quake or similar on that machine, you’re going to learn about Riva128 drivers at some point, anyway. I have found it useful when changing video drivers with the STB to do an intermediate step of setting the display adapter as a standard VGA in windows, and rebooting, before trying a new driver file set. It doesn’t take that long and seems to keep registry problems to a minimum.

You don’t even need the Windows CD.

STB maintains current Windows and NT drivers at their web site (www.stb.com) and nVidia also has the "reference" drivers for Riva 128 based cards on theirs (www.nvidiacorp.com). I also strongly recommend you not install or disinstall the little utility called "vision 128" that comes with CD that comes with the card. IT is not compatible with Windows 98 and can (will) cause massive problems with the registry. Plus, you don’t need it.

I don’t know if there is a Linux driver for the nVidia Riva 128 chipset. If not, the STB will work perfectly well as a fast VGA card, but I’d not think that’s what you want.

Regards

MATTHEW L VOLK [MATTHEW.L.VOLK@slchicago.infonet.com]

FYI, all Intel Pentium (not P2) chipsets other than the old HX pro only cache the bottom 64MB of RAM. If you put in 128MB with one of their chipsets the first 64MB of RAM wouldn’t be covered by the cache, which really shows down the system. This is described at the Intel web site for their chipsets (which I don’t have handy right now).

Saw no mention of setting up a Linux swap partition.

Dunno-- Just asking.

-R

Dear Dr. Pournelle

Some more advise re Linux after reading your last updates on your intentions.

Why do you insist on installing all these OSs on the same 7GB disk? If you stick to the config you mentioned (I still don’t know which video board you are going to install. You are likely to have most of your problems with the graphics board) you will not need Win98 to look up the values.

And if you just want to access data on your network you will use Linux Samba to read all dta on the Chaos Manor network.

If the reason for Win98 is Office or games, you have - I think - enough other machines at home.

So, the only argument for Linux might to test the machine under known behavioral pattern (Windows) before you go install something you know less well.

Don’t worry. Linux is easier to install than Win and if doesn’t work it is much easier to find our why not. As I said, mostly the problems concern the graphics card (AGP is not yet well supported).

Ah, before I forget. If you have 64MB or more you need to tell your kernel so. The RedHat manual will help you with that.

Also, comp.os.linux.admin comp.os.linux.setup and comp.os.linux.x are excellent sources of help. I usually get help within one or two hurs at most.

Enjoy

Moshe Bar

Glad to see you still at it. I’ve missed your column since BYTE closed shop.

As I write this, I’m using a linux desktop.

Get the system configured right out of the box by re-formatting the hard drive completely, don’t bother with linux-on-FAT (called UMSDOS). Don’t forget to make a swap partition of at least 64Megs. Swap partitions are noticeably faster than swap files.

Then, install everything you need, which should include Netscape 4.05 or 4.06, NB install the joe editor, you’ll need it later.

Then, though RedHat 5.1 comes with a quite usable desktop, its missing a proper graphical file manager and several other things that you are quite used to, like double click associations.

One alternative is at

just d/l all the .rpm files there.

If you have the machine hooked up in your local net with internet

connectivity

then you can type

ncftp <the above Url> and it will start a text ftp client that works fairly well and does anonymous ftp automagically, the command "get *.rpm" will do the trick.

To Install:

This will install a quite usable desktop environment that is surprisingly ‘95/NT like.

http://www.kde.org/ for the yadda on it. (I didn’t write it, but I wish I had)

A couple more things need to happen:

You system has to know where to find the files, executables and shared

libraries for this desktop and windowmanager,

so you have to (manually)

2> you have to add /opt/kde/lib to your shared library directories in

ld.so.conf

What Microsoft calls a dll, Unix calls a shared library. They’ve been around in Unix for 15 years or so, and their handling of them is pretty elegant.

/etc/ld.so.conf is sort of like saying that you can autoload dll’s from directory a,b,c,d and the current directory too.. Library autoload paths are exclusive of the PATH environment variable, and set ONLY in this file.

after changing this file you must (as root) run "ldconfig -v" so it can build a cache of shared libraries to speed application launch.

For instance, I have an old Quake binary that is not compatible with

the

main C library on my system, so I do the following

and it works just fine, no complaints from anything—and certainly

no crashes.

3> Then you edit your .Xclients file in your login directory

Edit using the joe editor, its keystrokes are Wordstar... you still remember wordstar... you used to brag on it.

I’ll enclose my copies, so you can see where stuff belongs.

When you are done, log in as yourself

Jay Thorne jay@kesoftware.com KE Software

E Gray [grayhome@sprintmail.com]

All right, here’s the lowdown on what I’ve managed to make out from your various Linux conversations.

Ok, so someone told you Linux has a perfectly good boot loader, which in a way it does(maybe several depending on how you look at things), but LiLo ain’t all that great a boot loader. It’s just a bit, well difficult to understand. Most people I’ve talked with think System Commander is better from a comprehension POV. Besides, it’s sometimes best to stick with what you know..

I don’t know how many people have been tellling you that Linux is easier to install than Windows, but they’re wrong(IME, if nothing else any version of Windowss is *far* easier to install).. It’s certainly more easily customizable, but that doesn’t make it easier period.

The swap partiton is nothing more than a way to keep a swap file in a different place..whether or not it’s better depends on to whom you’re listening.

I don’t know which X-window manger you’re planning to use, but Xfree86 *does* support the Riva128’s(that’s the video card you’ve got right? It might be a good idea for you to post the specs of the hardware you’ve got on the Linux page so everyone can know what you’re working with), as this page here shows:

Don’t know about the others such as KDE, or Accelerated-X, but you can worry about those later.

You’ve actually made a good start by installing Windows first, as Linux handles different OSes *better* than Windows. There are other OSes to consider though, such as the BeOS(they’ve got demo CD’s that only cost 3.95, see the details here:

And Sun is providing Solarisx86 for the low price of 20$ or so. See the details here:

Erich Schwarz [schwarz@cubsps.bio.columbia.edu]

Dr. Pournelle,

I was going to warn you: W98 has been "improved" in a way that makes it very difficult to do dual-boot (either W98/Linux or W98/BeOS). It seems that MS has decided to change the boot mechanisms of W98 in a way that doesn’t add much obvious functionality but does mightly screw up dual-boot set-ups like Disk Druid or the older fdisk. You might well consider just putting W95 on (Linette?). *Having* W95 on the machine as a way to test for hardware glitches isn’t a bad idea, especially when starting Linux de novo; but you don’t really need W98 for that, I would imagine.

Some other points: video cards are the great pons asinorum of Linux. You need to make sure the video card you’re using has device drivers in the distribution you’re using—Red Hat 5.1 is very well-endowed, but there’s always some new clone-maker who has their own special video card that can’t be used. Matrox Millenium runs on my machine right now. You can find which cards are supported at the Red Hat web site.

The K Desktop Environment is fun to have but takes a bit of work to compile on Red Hat since RH is trying to keep their distribution uncomplicated by non-GPL licensing. Fortunately Red Hat 5.1 comes with a perfectly usable windows manager.

There is no way in hell that Microsoft is going to make Word for Linux. (No, I don’t have legal proof of that statement. Call it a wild yet strong hunch.) But Word Perfect 8 is available for Linux, and should be interconvertible with WP for W95.

Invaluable books: _Running Linux, 2cd. ed._ and _Linux in a Nutshell_, both from O’Reilly. They complement one another nicely and are immediately helpful even at the earliest stages of newbie-dom, yet remain informative for a long time.

Finally, my favorite aspects of Linux versus Windows or even MacOS: multitasking, multiple screens, and command-line job control. Linux is IMMENSELY better at doing multiple intensive tasks and not making you wait for one to run before you can do the other. (The quiet and speed with which Linux juggles multiple tasks must be seen to be believed.) The multiple screens which come with the Red Hat windows manager (and are gussied up in the K Desktop Enviroment), after about 5 minutes getting used to them, are infinitely superior to having to do everything on one cluttered screen. And command-line job control means no more having to fight a balky machine to make a program stop cleanly: just get a root prompt and type "kill -9 [process ID number]." Would to Ghu MacOS had that, though allegedly OS X should.

Calvin Dodge [caldodge@ix.netcom.com]

Dear Jerry,

Just start the installation. Early on it will give you the choice of fdisk or "Disk Druid" - go with Disk Druid. It’s not as nice and automatic as, say, Maxtor’s "MaxBlast", but it’s much easier to use than Linux fdisk.

Remember that the "Linux Native" partition must be mounted to root, so put a "/" in the text box for the mount point.

Intel EtherExpress should work just fine - that’s the NIC in the machine I’m typing this on.

Sincerely,

Having just put Red Hat Linux on my old 486/33, I have some advice on how to set up a linux box. Just don’t ask me how to run a dual boot machine. The 486 was sacrificed so that I could learn how to use Linux, then I may put Linux on my main machine. So far everything has gone very well.

Video: In truth, Linux doesn’t care about video. The X-Windows system however, only works on some cards. I think you have been given the list of supported boards in previous e-mails. Just use one of those. I did overhear somewhere that AGP support is sort of flaky and only the Matrox AGP cards work.

Sound: The plain truth is that only Creative Labs Sound Blaster Hardware is supported. Compatibles do not work. The support runs from the original Sound Blaster up through the AWE32 (I think). Linux interfaces directly to the hardware for all devices, so many peripherals that really on driver emulation run into problems.

Partitioning: Everyone I have talked to has said double your memory in a swap Linux Swap partition. There are two schools of though on the rest of the partition. The first is just to make a huge 2gig or so partition on the root "/". The other school of thought is to use at least three partitions. A small one, 100 meg or so for root "/". A large one, 1-2 gig for "/usr" that holds the programs and a mid sized 500-1000 meg "/home" partition that holds your work. The only advantage to the second is that you don’t loose everything to HD errors.

I'm no Linux expert, but here's what I did, and it worked fine:

1. From a blank hard drive, boot DOS and run FDISK. Create whatever size primary partition you want for Windows 98. Create a second partition if you want to reserve more non-Linux space. Format the new partitions, and install Windows 98. I'd leave them as FAT-16 so that OSs other than Win9x can get to them, but that's up to you. (Actually, I installed on a system that already had Win95 vs. Win98 on it, but it should work the same).

2. Put the Red Hat Linux distribution CD in the drive, and boot with the boot floppy. Use the character-graphic Disk Druid to do the partitioning. Linux requires at least two partitions, a root partition one and a swap partition. The swap partition must be at least the size of installed RAM (and no less than 16MB). Linux won't use a swap partition larger than 127 MB, so don't waste space making one larger. The manual goes into great detail (see page 26ff) about the optional partitions you can use and why you'd want to, but I'd guess you can get by with just the root partition and one for swap. You can also use a /usr partition if you want, but I wouldn't get any more complicated than that. Assuming 64MB of RAM, I'd go with a 127 MB swap partition (in case you upgrade RAM); a 100 MB root partition, and a /usr parition of at least 1 GB (and more if you feel like allocating it).

The manual is quite clear at describing the steps required to install Linux. I didn't have any problems at all, and I'm no Unix guru.

Robert Bruce Thompson

Sanders, Paxton [psanders@ingr.com]

Below my signature is text copied off Red Hat’s installation guide, located

here:

A month or so ago I installed RH. It’s worked fine dual-booting with W98. Be sure to install Windows FIRST, and leave some of your drive unformatted/unpartitioned.

For example, I have a 3.5GB disk on that particular computer. I gave 1.0GB to Windows - it’s a print server, with scanner and CD-RW attached, and that’s all it does in Windows, so I saved the space - and the rest was given to Linux. Once I booted off the Linux install floppy, it recognized my Windows partition, and installed Linux and LILO just fine and dandy after it had set up and formatted the rest of the disk, I was off and running.

Now, every time I boot, I get a prompt. I can choose which OS to start. It’s more than easy. But I’ve heard for it to be that easy, you have to install Windows first.

My advice is to install ALL options. You probably won’t need some of it, but it’s less time-comsuming now and later if you have everything installed.

Good luck.

------------------------------------------------------------

2.4.4 How Many Partitions?

Although you can install Red Hat Linux in a single large partition (subject to any of the partitioning considerations we’ve mentioned so far), it’s a much better idea to split things up a bit. We recommend the following layout as a compromise between single-partition simplicity, and multi-partition flexibility:

Please Note: If you plan to install all the software packages accompanying Red Hat Linux, you may need to use even larger partitions. A swap partition—Swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. If your computer has 16 MB of RAM or less, you must create a swap partition. Even if you have more memory, a swap partition is still recommended. The minimum size of your swap partition should be equal to your computer’s RAM, or 16 MB (whichever is larger).

A root partition—The root partition is where / (the root directory) resides. It only needs to contain things necessary to boot your system, as well as system configuration files. A root partition of 50 MB to 80 MB works well for most systems.

A /usr partition—The /usr partition is where much of the software on a Red Hat Linux system resides. This partition should be between 200 MB and 500 MB, depending on how many packages you plan to install. If at all possible, try to be generous with the /usr partition. Any RPM-based packages you install later will (in general) use more space from /usr than from any other partition.

A /home partition—This is where users’ home directories go; the size of /home depends on how many users you plan to have on your Red Hat Linux system and what they might store in their home directories. A MILO partition—Alpha owners that will be using MILO to boot their systems should create a 1.5 MB DOS partition where MILO can be copied after the installation is complete.

Additionally, you may wish to create any of the following:

A /usr/local partition—Traditionally, /usr/local has been used to hold things you wish to keep separate from the rest of your Red Hat Linux system, such as software that is not available as an RPM package. The size depends on the amount of software you anticipate putting on your system. A /usr/src partition—There are two things that are stored in /usr/src on a Red Hat Linux system:

Linux Kernel Sources—The complete sources for the Linux kernel are stored here, and new kernels are built here.

Sources For RPM-Based Packages—If a source package file (aka SRPM) is installed, the files are stored here. Note that, unless specified otherwise, any packages built also use a build directory located here. Again, the size of this partition would depend on the amount of software you anticipate building.

While much easier than it once was, anybody who tries to tell me that installing Linux is easier than Windows will find me questioning their definition of the word ‘easy.’ The partition issues alone are a serious hunk of arcana for the uninitiated. Having to download and compile software like KDE for one’s particular distribution is a stunning concept for those who become reasonably adept at Windows installation.

FWIW, I couldn’t get early Intel EtherExpress boards to work reliably with Linux. The system would work for a while, but eventually lock up completely. I’ve got 3 of the EtherExpress boards and they have worked well on Windows systems for years.

After reviewing the Linux eexpress.c source, and searching Deja News for solutions, I finally replaced the cards with cheap NE2000 clones.

For more info on the Linux EtherExpress problems, search Deja News for "Linux EtherExpress CU Wedged".

BTW, other (more recent) models of the EtherExpress board do seem to be supported well by Linux.

I was just looking through the XFree86 FAQ, and I noticed that Riva 128 support was added in XFree86 version 3.3.2. The version on the RedHat CD that you have is one version earlier than that, so if you want to get your Riva 128 to work, you’ll need to download a more recent version of XFree86.

Installing a new X-Windows is not horrenously complex, but it’s not exactly user-friendly either. You’ll almost certainly have some trouble with it. Having done it myself, I’d be happy to help you through it, although I don’t want to spoil the purity of your "experiment" unless you really need the help. Your starting point is (http://www.xfree86.org).

Because hardware manufacturers are reluctant to release specifications to their hardware, Linux usually runs between 6 months to 1 year behind in driver support; On the other hand, older hardware tends to be supported much more comprehensively. Also, bug fixes are available on a much more timely basis. The exception to this rule is for brand-new experimental hardware, such as SMP CPU’s, which aren’t supported under Windows, these tend to get supported in Linux rather quickly as the manufacturer has a much greater incentive to support third-party drivers.

The other problem with lag time is that the Red Hat CD’s are only published every few months, and each CD contains a snapshot of the stable "release" version at the time of publication, not the more advanced "development" version. Red Hat now has a new product called "Raw Hide" which is a compilation of the development version of Linux, as well as alpha versions of various applications and utilities.

What this means for the user, generally, is that hardware that is less than one year old is often significantly more complex to install than older hardware.

Talin (Talin@ACM.org) -- Systems Engineer, PostLinear Entertainment.

[http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin]

Jerry,

I can understand why you might be confused about partitioning. Part of the reason that you’re getting contradictory advice is that there is indeed more than one way to go about this. A normal Linux user would not have these problems, they would simply take the first advice that they got, and it would probably work. Unforunately, you are now it the middle of a classic "better is the enemy of good enough" learning experience, which I’m sure is the last thing you needed right now.

So, instead of giving you specific advice this time, I thought I’d fill in some background information which might make choosing which advice to follow easier.

Unix doesn’t have drive letters like A:, C:, etc. Instead, drives are mapped to directories. In fact, _any_ directory could be a seperate partition if you wanted it to be.

There’s only two reasons for dividing things up into partitions. The first one is for performance reasons, and the second is for ease of backup.

With regards to the issue of performance: It’s true that in some situations multiple drives can be faster than a single drive. It’s also true that in some cases they can be slower. Few of us really understand the dynamics of hard-drive operation well enough to be able to predict which will occur. The only concrete piece of advice that I can give is that I’ve heard that a seperate swap partition is faster than a swap file. Other than that, given the lack of knowledge about performance options, I’d opt to go with the simplest configuration possible.

Now to address the issue of backup. A lot of people advocate putting your own user files in a seperate partition, so that it becomes easy to back up or reconfigure into a larger partition. I suppose the general idea is that the Linux system is large, and your files are small, so it would make sense to back up just the stuff that’s irreplaceable, since you can always re-install everything else from the CD.

To be honest, I have not yet learned how to back up a Linux system, nor learned which is the best way to do it. (I have not yet needed to: I tend to back up files by copying them to a different computer. However, I plan to get around to it eventually). As a result, I don’t know how relevant this idea of backing up a partition at a time really is.

Talin (Talin@ACM.org) -- Systems Engineer, PostLinear Entertainment.

[http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin]

Hi Jerry,

you can add there the address and names of the machines on your network. I’m assuming you are using TCP/IP on them, which you’ll need to if you want to connect Windows to Linux.

I just read up to the latest events on Linette.

For Linette login under root, startx, and go to network configuration and

tell it the unique 192.168.1.x IP and the netmask of 255.255.255.0. No

gateway and no routing is needed since there is only one route within your

network. Voila. Without rebooting, you should now be able to see

everymachine from every other machine on the network. If you compile a

/etc/hosts file with

192.168.1.x linette

192.168.1.x pentafluge

Try "ping 192.168.1.x" where x is the unique digit for the linette from any windows machine. Or, better, try telnet 192.168.1.x if you get the login screen, login and work as if on Linette itself. If all of this work, network is set up correctly.

I’ve been reading your Linux odyssey. The "idiot" complaints are silly—Linux is genuinely non-trivial to learn and nobody who’s really stupid tries. Also, I know of *nobody* who has not struggled with X window configuration even *with* a Red Hat distribution, at least the first time.

About your Applixware plaints: you’re right, the manuals written for UNIX wizards who’ve never done a spreadsheet.

My advice:

1. If you don’t understand the UNIX file system, or the concepts of redirecting output, pipes, and filters, get an introductory book on UNIX that explains it all. The best one-day intro I’ve seen is _Learning the UNIX Operating System, 4^th Edition_ from O’Reilly. Alternatively, _The UNIX Programming Environment_ by Kernighan and (?)Pike, despite its forbidding name, is a fine short introduction to the various directories and file controls you’ll have on a UNIX-like system and what they mean. To get beyond that level, _UNIX Power Tools_ from O’Reilly is absolutely, utterly invaluable— written for non-specialists but full of ideas. (It’s also a doorstopper, but hey.)

It’s really, really important that if you find UNIX filesystems and information streams arcane, that you work through that feeling and get to the point where they seem natural. Unless you’ve on familiar terms with UNIX filesystems and their names, it is *impossible* to make good use of the (potentially genuinely powerful) commands.

2. If you want to just hack, make friends with the "man" command. You’ll want to use it even if you do get the book I’m going to recommend, by the way, since being able to look up correct command syntax with "man [command]" is one of the unrecognized strengths of UNIX/Linux. But if you don’t get any other books, you will *need* "man" to figure out how to mount and unmount CDs and how the various other cantrips work.

3. Also, before you do anything else, run:

% man mount

% man umount

and *read* them until you understand how to mount and dismount a CD.

You’ll do that a lot.

4. Get, *now*: _Linux in a Nutshell_ and _Running Linux_, 2cd. ed., from O’Reilly.

_LiaN_ has a splendid list of the commands you’ll want to use as user or home-sysadmin—from really mundane ones like "cp" (copy), "mv" (move), "rm" (delete), "mkdir" (make directory), "rmdir" (remove directory) ... to tiny but neat ones like "arch" (tell me the machine’s architecture) to housekeeping ones like "shutdown" (turn off the machine safely) to power-user ones like "gcc" (compile C source code).

_RL_ complements _LiaN_ by giving extensive normal-text instructions on all the core stuff you need to go from confused beginnner to modestly skilled beginner. That’s the one book I used to get over the worst of the learning curve—with that book, and the Red Hat manual, you can puzzle out most anything if you’re patient about combing through the index of each book. For instance, _RL_ gives full instructions on things that everybody else assumes you know, like how to *correctly* shutdown your machine:

% shutdown -h now

or how to make it shutdown and then immediately reboot:

% shutdown -r now

Also, while I can’t remember the details, the Applixware is almost certainly on a CD, and you almost certainly must do something like:

[get the Applixware CD into the CD drive]

% mount iso9660 /dev/cdrom <or something like that>

After that you probably want to do one of the following things:

run an "rpm" command on the stuff in the CD, or do a "cp" command

from the CD to your hard drive, and then unpack the stuff (with

"gunzip" and then, if it’s in .tar format, something like "tar

• xvf").

5. The "rpm" command was essentially invented by Red Hat as part of their RPM system for easy software installation/removal, and is described reasonably well in the Red Hat manual.

 

• Erich Schwarz

Jerry,

Moshe Bar’s letter on VIEW is almost correct. Regarding networking with Windows machines, he advises that IP addresses and machine names should be in a file called HOSTS.SAM. Actually, it should be called simply HOSTS (no extension). HOSTS.SAM is a sample HOSTS file that I really wish Microsoft hadn’t included in the system as it confuses people.

NT boxes store it in C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc; Win95 boxes put it in C:\windows\system if memory serves (I don’t have a Win95 box on hand at the moment).

Theoretically if you set up a WINS server and enable WINS you eliminate that problem, but that’s entirely another discussion. If/when you want to talk about Windows networking, let me know. On small LANs like Chaos Manor’s, you can get away with just accepting Windows’ defaults, but on large LANs you definitely don’t want to do that (this is word coming directly from Microsoft—of course we were thrilled to hear that, having accepted the defaults ever since Win95 came out).

I’m reading your Linux discussion with interest. We’ve talked about Linux a little bit, but since we’re mostly a Token-Ring network, we’re hesitant to do it—Linux appears to only support certain IBM Token-Ring cards, and they’re ISA, and we certainly don’t want ISA network cards in servers.

Hi Jerry,

just read about your Linux adventure and the Red Hat distribution.

even it might be too late now to change, I suggest you have a look at

Their latest release does not only contain the latest available software packages, the installation manual you’ll get is VERY helpful for a complete novice user—it still can’t answer all the questions one has, but you’ll get started very fast. Also, configuration of the netword and sound card is described.

The main advantage of the package is that the built in setup/config tool(s) are working very well (point’n’shoot).

If your system bios supports booting from CD, you don’t even need the boot disk.

"Birchall, Richard" <birchallr@aecl.ca>

Your page at <http://www.jerrypournelle.com/linux/linux2.html> says:

Linette is a Cyrix MX chip system, with MSI motherboard...

...I can't get this

mother board to believe that there is any such thing as a PS/2 mouse.

I don't understand why: there's a pinout for it, and the manuals say it should recognize it, but there's no place in the BIOS to turn it on and connecting a mouse through the mother board pinout does nothing.

I have the same motherboard, and am using it with a PS/2 mouse, no problem. The mouse works under Windows 98, WIndows NT Server, and Sun Solaris x86. There is a place in the BIOS setup to "Enable PS/2 mouse", at least in this version of the BIOS (June 1998).

Regarding your UNIX experiences, I also recently been trying UNIX for the first time. However instead of Linux, I have been using Sun Solaris x86, which is currently being offered at nominal cost by Sun. This is the same UNIX used by Sun workstations.

Information on free Solaris:

http://sun.com/developers/solarispromo.html

The Solaris installation was automatic. My hardware was detected and everything just worked. After Solaris reboots, the CDE (Common Desktop Environment) is easy to use.

Best Regards,

Donald W. McArthur [don@mcarthurweb.com]

Jerry,

I build and install computers. I create and maintain websites. I am a network administrator. l use Linux as a firewall, mail server and Internet gateway. That said, I’m afraid that there has been much said about "Linux challenging Microsoft for the desktop" that is simply hooie.

To successfully use Linux (or any Unix system) as a desktop environment on a daily basis requires either a professional support staff or YEARS of study and familiarization.

Supporters of Linux as a desktop alternative are invariably hobbyists who approach expert level in their understanding. They have no interest in all the coding that allows Windows to make the computer a useful tool to the vast majority of users.

Linux is a fun hobby, and fine for the provision of certain network services. But if you need to get work done the majority operating systems are the way to go. And that will never change.

When Linux becomes useful to the regular computer user is when Linux will be indistinguishable from Windows.

I know that dealing with Linux can be really frustrating at this point.

Neither of these two desktop environments are supplied on the CD you have, because they are both too new. Nor are they particularly easy to install—there’s a number of components that need to be fetched from several places. But once they are installed, a lot of things should get easier.

Talin (Talin@ACM.org) -- Systems Engineer, PostLinear Entertainment.

[http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin]