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Toxicways 05-14-2013 09:22 PM

Just starting linux
 
Hi,

I was wonder if the following tasks can be accomplished before I start installing a linux distro.

Task one:

I believe linux doesn't have separate drives, like windows where there're different logical/physical drives.

I currently have :

1x Samsung SSD - 128 GB

2x WD HDD - 1 TB & 600 GB

Is it possible to link all three hard drives into one main hard drive? (I believe this would be all under one root.)

Task two: (Need opinion)

I play games from time to time, so I would be using virtual box to play these games.

or

should I use daul boot:

SSD - I will install windows.

HDD- Have linux installed.

Task Three:

I want to share videos on network. (In windows it is called Network Drive)

Is this possible?

P.S Is Linux good for watching video in HD (720p, 1080p, 1080i) (m2ts, ts, mkv,)?

-----------------------------Off topic-------------------------

What distro & certification is good for network administrator?

I heard that Red Hat Certification is the best one to get.

I'm guessing Fedora should be a good distro to be using?

frankbell 05-14-2013 09:38 PM

You have a few misconceptions. Here are some short answers.

Quote:

I believe linux doesn't have separate drives, like windows where there're different logical/physical drives.
Linux does indeed recognize drives and partitions, but the terminology is different.

A drive might be identified as sda (Sata/SCUZZI Disk a). The first partition on that drive would be sda1, the second, if present, would be sda2, and so on. The next drive would be sdb, and so on. When you configure a Linux distribution, you don't do so with "Drives" as you do with Windows, you do so with the partitions, which are what the operating system actually cares about.

If you have multiple physical drives, you can merge them into one logical drive using LVM or Logical Volume Manager. Some distros use LVM by default (CentOS, Fedora). Most do not.

Then there's RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) which is a whole nother thing.

As for games, if you play Windows games, you could try VirtualBox, but you could also possibly use Wine. Some games seem to work very well under Wine; others do not. You can see the Wine appdb for some examples.

As for playing videos, I'm watching an AVI on Linux Mint 13 using VLC as I type this. There are sometimes issues with codecs, especially for Real Audio media, and with DVDs, because of DRM. I have high-def *.mkv files that run flawlessly.

As for sharing media over your home network, my media server runs Debian 7.0. Linux was created with networking in mind.

Then there's Myth TV.

I'm going to suggest that you visit the About dot com Linux site. It's oriented to new and intermediate users and should answer a lot of your questions. You can also find a wealth of information at The Linux Documentation Project.

Ztcoracat 05-15-2013 01:28 AM

Hi:

Quote:

I'm guessing Fedora should be a good distro to be using?
That depends on what you want, need, and expect from of operating system-

I have been running Fedora for a while now and it is a nice distribution.
It is cutting edge and fairly reasonable to install.

Should you decide to make Fedora your OS I strongly suggest reading the documentation.
http://fedoraproject.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Addend7o5lg

BTW,Fedora is the test-bed for Red Hat-
If you are not in favor of performing a fresh installation of the Fedora distribution every 3-6 months this disto may not be for you-
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/0...alpha-released
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Relea...rd=Releases/18

HTH

kooru 05-15-2013 02:14 AM

Hi and Welcome to LQ!
Red Hat Certification is a good choice.
For the distro, you can try CentOS

Toxicways 05-17-2013 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kooru (Post 4951461)
Hi and Welcome to LQ!
Red Hat Certification is a good choice.
For the distro, you can try CentOS

Thanks, i will look into centOS after i get a good grip of Fedora, I worked on CentOS when i had to build an asterisk.

For the other two post, I will look back at them when I finally install fedora.

johnsfine 05-17-2013 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toxicways (Post 4951355)
Is it possible to link all three hard drives into one main hard drive? (I believe this would be all under one root.)

All accessible directories would be under one root anyway in Linux. You can link three hard drives to act as one in Linux using LVM or RAID. But in your situation I strongly advise against it.

If you merge drives using LVM or RAID, any file or directory may be split across any of the drives. That gives you the flexibility that your free disk space is available anywhere. But it takes away your control to decide where you want to deploy the greater read speed of the SSD vs. the greater capacity of the hard drives. Also it reduces the reliability of the whole storage system.

The usual Linux approach is that one partition on one drive is "root". Any other partition on the same or other drives is "mounted" as a directory somewhere below root. The whole directory tree of that mounted partition appears as a subdirectory tree below the mount point. Any free space in that mounted partition is available for use only within that sub tree.

Some key parts of the directory tree must be in partitions formatted as Linux file systems. But you can also mount Windows partitions in the directory tree. So if you dual boot, you will probably keep any data accessed by both OSs in a Windows partition that is mounted as a directory when you are booted in Linux.

Quote:

I want to share videos on network. (In windows it is called Network Drive)
Actually in Windows it is called a "share". You can access files and directories in a share directly in Windows with most programs. But some programs cannot use files in a share directly. You can map a drive letter to a share in Windows, which then might be called a "Network drive". Programs which can't use a share directly can use it through a mapped drive letter.

In Linux you can make directories available to other systems as Windows shares using a program called Samba. The reverse of that (which I think is what you are requesting) is called SMB. Very few programs in Linux can directly access an (unmounted) Windows share via SMB. The common method that makes such a share available to all programs is to mount it (via SMB) as a directory, just like mounting a partition as a directory.


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