Brand new to linux, could use some info.
 

hey, im sure you get these newb questions everyday. but please dont
be negative, just dont respond if you dont want to.

fist, i grabbed a bunch of e books on linux. what is the easiest one to understand, i mean like border line retard understand.hehehe

second, duel booting on seperate harddrives. i have linux on the main, and windows on the secondary. when i enter grub through f8.
it asks me if i want to boot fedora 5 or other. how can i make grub reconize windows?

third. using wine.
i want to run peer guardian 2, i think i installed it, but i have no idea how to start it up. using wine in general in retard instuctions.

more stupid questions to come.=)

1) Partly depends on the distro you're using, but generally good documents are at the Linux Documenation Project website. I presently like the Rute Tutorial. But I've also heard good things about "Point and Click Linux" which you can buy with a MEPIS CD included (not sure if there's an e-version). The easiest way to learn linux (beyond the basics in Rute Tutorial) is to figure out something specific you want to do, and then google for it. For example your #2 question, google for "grub dual boot windows".

2) From google, "grub dual boot windows" -- http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/..._Windows.2FDOS

3) Not sure whether it will run under wine or not. But here's the link from the Peer Guardian website that says to try MoBlock on linux instead. http://phoenixlabs.org/pglinux/

Welcome to Linux!

Some small advice from one who has suffered and then found the joy of success after perseverence -
- walk before you try to fly, do one thing at a time

Your questions
1 - Keep scanning the internet. Use the words 'howto' and 'guide'.

2 - Was one of those 'linux' meant to be a 'Windows'? Have you tried the 'other' option?
If that doesn't get you Windows, grub can boot to it, but it will take a little tinkering.
You will need a text editor (and for many other things too). I prefer nano, because it has a list of commands, but you may not have this (you might have vim or vi).
or
will help you to use these.

So, once you've mastered your text editor, you'll need to add some text to the file menu.lst
You will need to do this as the root user.

Grub uses a different way of referring to your disks. They will probably be called hd0 and hd1. Partitions on hd0 will be hd0,0 and hd0,1 etc.
Have a look in menu.lst for a line something like
Between that line and the line that says:
will be all the information that grub needs to boot Fedora. Look for the bits that say which disk it is on (either hd0 or hd1). Windows will probably be on the other one, and probably on the the first partition, so either hd0,0 or hd0,1

So to boot Windows you'll need another section like this:
but you may need to replace (hd0,0) with (hd1,0)

And then you would need to reboot.

If this doesn't work you may want to wade through the Grub Manual. But it's not all that basic I'm afraid. Grub is quite versatile. It does have a very useful cammand line that you should read about.

All this is not usually necessary - usually grub finds your Windows and adds it to the boot list. It is possible that there is something wrong with your hardware setup.

As for wine, that's for another day. I haven't tried it.

thanx that helps. the other link just confused me. its hard having to learn a computer all over again. kinda overwelmed.

first things first. im switching the os by switching the hd, and i can see a pin getting damaged. then its all over.

kinda off subject, does linux save programs by having pieces of it in those craploads of three letter directories?
doesent that get confusing?

ok back to duel booting.

i cant find menu.lst any other way i can find it?
edit;; found it by going through the windows.

Here's a link to the RUTE manual online. Note you'll have to use firefox or another browser that supports gzipped html files (IE 6.1 seems to support it). Chapter 17 is on the unix file structure and will answer more of your questions about where does linux store files.

Here's also a jpg of the file tree and where types of programs live...

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot



didnt happen. i think i need to give grub the directory where the windows startup file is. and stick it somewere in this mess.

ugh, this is 2 hard, imma go give windows some flowers and say im sorry.

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

Windows will not boot from secondary HDD. GRUB can fool Windows into thinking it's on primary.

my god it worked!!! thanx guys really helped me out.
now all i need is to learn how to compile and work wine, then i wouldnt need windows anymore.

but im gonna try to do that myself.

thanx =)

ah yes - sorry about that mistake of mine

thanks Emerson - you've just showed me how to boot from a usb stick without messing with the order of hard drives (when I boot from a usb stick on my laptop, grub calls the stick hd0 and the drive hd1 - linux gets it right once it's booted, but this way is cleaner)

Have a look at The File System Hierarchy Standard. It will help you to understand the "crapload of three letter directories.

Also, check out this link: http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/

If you put your distro in your profile, it will help people to help you. Different distros have different ways of doing things

I hope this helps
--Ian

There is a list of bash (linux command line) commands here:
http://www.ss64.com/bash/
This site also has commands for Windows, Mac OS X and Oracle. If you know what the command is in Windows/MSDOS, it gives you a list of similar linux commands at the bottom of the page.

You don't have to compile it, almost every distro has it...

u use fedora from what I understand, so go to terminal

to root, then write
then when it's finish, exit from root
then write as user
and you're done!