Linux!!!!!!!

MikeDB · Post by **MikeDB** » Fri May 20, 2005 1:20 pm

Hi all i have probably asked this question more then 100 times but is linux free and if it is can someone send me a "install" for linux?

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Streety · Post by **Streety** » Fri May 20, 2005 1:41 pm

Linux is generally free although you can pay for support (or donate to help the project) if you wish.

Because Linux is open source (anyone can tweak it to their own liking) there are many different versions or distros. Your best bet to get a copy is to go to somewhere like http://www.linuxiso.org/. The files are also generally rather large (mainly due to the number of free programs bundled in with Linux) so it makes more sense to visit a website than to get someone to send them to you.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri May 20, 2005 4:37 pm

Yeah and expect slow download speeds, usually the servers are conjested, which is understandable given they have lot of huge files on them.

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MikeDB · Post by **MikeDB** » Fri May 20, 2005 6:21 pm

Ok thanks and if i wanted to switch it over how would i do that? and when i swith it over to linux how can i keep all of the files that are on the old OS i have now?

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri May 20, 2005 6:24 pm

I would not recomend switching directly to linux, you're better off dual booting. It will take a while to get used to and you'll have to come up with a plan to switch over stuff like your email, and other programs you use in windows that won't work in linux. Wine can run some windows programs, but not all, so it's all things to look into.

Oh, and if you play games, you'll for sure want a windows partition. (or linux version of VMware)

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Streety · Post by **Streety** » Fri May 20, 2005 8:35 pm

Dual boot is definitely the way to go. Going straight to linux is a fairly big culture shock. It'll probably take you a while before you're anything like comfortable with it.

You'll need to set up a partition on your hard drive in which to install linux and then when you start up you'll just get a little menu allowing you to choose linux or windows.

If you're using an NTFS file system I don't think you'll be able to access the files in the windows system from linux. As far as I know it's only possible with FAT32. However if you feel like re-installing windows you can easily change it to FAT32. The other options are copy your data to an external hard disk or back up your data to CD's or DVD's.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri May 20, 2005 8:45 pm

Oh and you can also get VMware for windows and install linux in a VM installation, that's a pretty cool program actually. You could even network both the VM install of linux and your real machine, so if you want to test it as a server or something.

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