I need serious help with Linux
 

Hi,

I hope someone outthere with take the trouble to poor himself (or herself) a drink and sit back to read this request? In a nutshell? Well I'll try to explain what I'm doing. At the moment I have a HP Pavilion, AMD 64 processor 3200+, 1.99 GHz and 512 MB RAM. It came with Windows XP allready installed on it and has a 180 Gigabite harddisk. I would need to format the harddisk and split it up into 2 x 90 Gigabite to install Linux right?

Now come the real questions.

1. If I install Windows XP on one of the 90 Gigabite drives I created, and Linux in the other one, would 512 MB memory be enough to let Windows be loaded into Linux? I've seen it being done, but as a newbie to Linux my asking "How do you guys do that?" wasn't really appreciated.

2. If I l'am able to open Windows XP without shutting down Linux, will it effect the settings of Windows? I want to use Windows XP to log onto the internet. I know how to set up a cable configuration / connection to the WWW within Windows XP, but can't figure out how to add it to Linux. Windows recognizes my cable connection directly, Linux doesn't.

3. Does anyone know how I can play MPEG files while running Linux? All I get is "Can not open file".

4. Within Linux, can I change the screen resolution? Or do I need to re-install Linux again?

Thank you to all that take the trouble to answer my questions. (Mean that)

Frans

The only question i can answer is that you can change the screen resolution, I've done it. I am a newbie too and dont know much more then that.

Well, I'm waiting around for an answer to my corrupted filesystem, I'll try and answers at least a few parts of yours.

You seem dead set on running windows within linux, which has several nice advantages, but I would expect the hassle factor is quite high, and it mightn't be worth it in the end.

If you have or can afford the famous vmware, maybe it's still an option, but I won't assume that.

You don't necessarily have to reformat your 180G winXP(NTFS) partition/fs, you can resize it and then repartition (ntfsresize or qt_parted), and so not have to reinstall windows, and all associated files.

That's a high spec machine. I'd mess around with a few Live Linux CD (knoppix comes to mind:-)) to see which run well in live cd mode.

Anyhow, here are my (inexpert) answers to your questions:

1. 512MB RAM is generally a good amount, I can only think of using vmware for this, I've seen it done on 512MB no probs. Myself, I'd go for a dual boot machine, with a FAT32 partition for exchanging files betgween WINXP and Linux. Yes, alot of booting up and booting down, but it's more robust to have windows working in it's native environment (vmware apart).

2. Trying out a few live cds may get you one that understand your cable connection and allows you to connect to internet through linux.

3. Running multimedia in Linux is a very basic task. There are a series of apps, (xmms, xine, mplayer) which are all good at doing it. The error you quote could be due to any number of reasons, too many to really get insight to the trouble you may be having.

4. Changing anything in linux is usually limited by the competence of the administrator/user rather than linux itself. It (linux) has immense flexibility, and screen resolution changing would be a pretty elementary task, so it's highly possible. It may even be as easy as booting the linux kernel with the option "vga=791" (replace number with the number corresponding to the resolution you want).

There you go. I know I don't answeer your questions all that well, but my comptence is very much limited, so it's a try anyhow.

2

What you saw was probably VMWare. As far as I know you can run it either on Linux or on Windows. It will you allow to run the other operating system virtually (i.e. run Windows in Linux). Your other option, if you are needing to run just a handful of Windows applications in Linux you can try using WINE.

Depending on the distribution you are using there are different tools to allow you to change the screen resolution. If you are daring you can modify the XF86Config and change the default resolution in there. Then just restart X and you should have the new resolution.

In RH 9, you can go to K Menu > System Settings > Display to change the resolution. Same for Fedora Core 2.

What distro are you using? I would suggest you get apt-get or yum if you are using rh9 or fc2. Mplayer is the best for most types of video and audio files.

to get apt-get or yum for rh9 or fc2. go here

all you do after installing it is run it as root

apt-get install <packagename>
or
yum install <packagename>

you can get more info from man pages

man apt-get OR apt-get --help

man yum OR yum --help

franswind; am also a newbie however i followed suggestions & recommended recommendations from mdk 8.1 guide book & preinstall instructions. so far no problems what so ever(1 exception my fault & exclusion) root psswd lost it now cannot log in. that is another story. so what i do recommend is to read any thing & everything possible till U understand & comprhend HOWTO, that will help in minimizing problems if any. there will be (case in point psswd). tip write manually notepad everything U do step by step for reference infuture just incase!

Hi,

Thanks for all the tips I'm getting, some are allready up and running.

Frans
:study:

You may also want to take a look at Cooperative Linux:

http://www.colinux.org/

Your PC sounds really sweet... I found a 100% sure solution to your problems: We switch. :D
I support the dual-booting option. Your system may be a good one, but wasting ressources running two operating systems simultaneously is rarely worth the benefits.
Like in Windows, multimedia playing is a matter of codecs - most players include the necessary ones. Using MPlayer is one suggestion. I use Kaffeine, a KDE-based frontend for Xine - and JuK for music.
Connecting to the Internet by a cable connection is mostly auto-detected, but sometimes require a bit of setup. I have had SuSE and Mandrake installed on my box, several versions of both, and it has been a long time since the system didn't automatically set them up. Of course, you can always try HD-installing Knoppix, the all-detecting brilliant Live-CD. As for partitioning, you should usually leave it to the Linux-installer. Several Windows partitioners make the partitions created invisible to the Linux installer.
All the more popular distributions have a setup area for changing system settings, such as screen resolution.

If you need a tool to split your disk you can download an iso image of the linux resque cd, burn a cd and boot from that cd, after linux has started use run_qtparted to start a patition magic clone

PS first check in windows your disk on error's

http://www.sysresccd.org/