New user

[Tank]

I know nothing of linus or unix, I have an old machine that i would like to put one of them on just for the sake of it.
Any resources people may be able to point me to, just to get started.

Tank

[wolfpac181]

Get a good beginer version of Linux. (redhat or mandrake is good) Most have very good manuals that help with configurations.

Go to a bookstore and get a good manual. My favorite (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/078214036X/qid=1057527891/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/002-4590075-5482427?v=glance&s=books)

Start small.....go from there.

[lb_james]

When I was a new Linux User, I found Slackware Live very useful.

In simple terms, it is a small distribution (release) of Linux that boots from a CD (i.e. It does not install). It doesn’t touch your hard disk drive.

Download it here: http://kmlinux.fjfi.cvut.cz/~danken/slacklive/dl/livecd-2.9.0.16.iso

… And burn (write) it to a CD using an application such as Nero Burning Rom: http://www.ahead.com/en

… Pop it in your CD-Rom Drive and restart your computer.

Enjoy :)

[wolfpac181]

Nice...... didn't they redo that distro for ZIP disk usage? more abilities for saving, moving, tar-ing, and all that fun stuff.

lb_james does have a big, maybe unintentional, point here. The more ya put on, the more ya have to deal with in configurations.

One thing worth learning is some of the commands: grep, ps aux, cp, whereis, dir, man, kill, and all the other fun ones.

[lb_james]

Slackware Live and ZipSlack are different distributions. I didn't mention ZipSlack because not everone has a Zip Drive.

My point was intentional. And configuration wise, Slackware Live requires virtually none.

Also, the next distribution (of Live) will include the ability to copy the CD's contents to a partition ;)

Gd point wolfpac181.

[Lujan]

I would need to know the specs of the old computer before I could make a recommendation. RedHat and Mandrake are great on 1ghz+ machines, but are slower than windows XP on slower machines.

I run Slackware 9.0 on my p233mmx laptop myself, it works perfectly, dont let anyone tell you slackware is hard, its not. I tried using RedHat on my laptop first, and it didnt detect my pcmcia nic and was slow as shit in Xwindows.

Really the distro shouldnt matter too much if you want to learn, distros like Slackware have very good books to help you with all manner of activities.

Depending on your hardware, an older machine with a low spec video card will not handle KDE or GNOME too well, my favourite window manager is Blackbox, very small and fast, and easy to customise.

[MisterBishi]

The Slackware Live ISO that the link above points to is a 1kb corrupt .rar archive. :\