New to Linux
 

hey, i am new to Linux as a whole, so i read this forum and found some fun stuff, and i also used the "which linux for you thing" and it recommended/ i want to use MEPIS. ive been to the site but i am afraid i am not sure waht to do next, can anyone tell me what to do, that and what is good cd burning software that i should get that wont cost me to atleast try.

mmk
 

Alright, here is what you do, go to the site and go to the left and look down at the about section and you will see "download", click it. Next go down to the bottom and find a mirror to download it from.

Some software to try out is Nero 6, its good

what version should i get? there are like 200 and i duno which is the best/most recent

SimplyMEPIS-3.3.1-1.iso

That seems to be the current in the mirrors, the ones ending in test are being testedt but not stable/fully supported.

The SimplyMEPIS_3.4-1.rc1.iso

Seems to be the release client for the next major mepis release.

I imagine it has some auto updater package thingie which menas you can update to the latest whe nit's released

tch, hell if i know.......i usually just guess...uh, i have no idea
I went to the second and i went to releases and i see SimplyMEPIS and it is an iso so, i would download that, it looks good...lol...

ok i dled 3.3.1 now what should i do, im installing it onto a comp with no OS as of this time. oh and nero (free dl) wants a serial number, and i wasnt given one, so i duno what to do with that, ill look for a diff dl site.

You will need software to burn the .iso to a cd as an IMAGE

windows = http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/gmm/fwcdburn.html
Linux = http://www.k3b.org/

Once you have burnt it you will need to set your machine to boot from CD, this is usually done by going into BIOS and specifying the first boot device.

From that point on you should follow the steps given by the installer

ok i put it on a cd, useing the 3rd of those programs, and told it to burn as an ios image, i set bios in other comp to use cd drive, it starts up, and when it tries to load it says "NTLDR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" what does this mean

what is that?

i dont have to have a form of windows on the harddrive first do i?

The NTDL stuff means that your computer is trying to boot on the hard and there is no OS installed.

Ensure that the CD image you burnt (the iso file ) is in your first CDROM/DVD drive and that your BIOS is pointed to boot from the CDROM first. Not the hard disk.

Then restart and should be able to follow the prompts.

ok, i unplugged my second cdrom so i only have one that the comp can use (teh other has no connector or power) and as for the boot thing, i made it so it says "1st boot device [atapi cdrom] 2nd boot device [ide-hddi] 3rd boot device [disabled]" is this right? also i took teh cd out and pout it in this comp, and opened it to make sure when it was burned it burned multiple files and not just one (i read somewhere i shoudl do this to amke sure cd is correct ont eh forum) and it indeed had multiple files. once i did all this i tried again, and it still says "NTLDR is missing press blah blah blah"



also i just wana make sure, this computer has one harddrive, and it is clean right now, has nothing on it at all, this is ok right? i jsut want linux on this comp, nothing else, and im useing MEPIS is this ok?




comp specs are:
processor type: intel(R) pentium(R) 4
processor speed: 1.40 GHz
system bus speed: 400MHz
cache RAM: 256KB
total memory: 128MB
HD: 40GB western dig.

yep no problems with totally clean install.
Sort out what you willk be doing with the machine now though. If later you want windows on this with dual boot probably a good idea to install Windoze first and let linux sort out the boot loader. Seems to be a bit easier.

nah i want linux only, never windows haha. its just going to be a comp for me to have fun with and use as a second comp, but i really want linux bc im thinking about switching from windows to linux on this comp, but i wanted to do it on my old one first to make sure i can. and to make sur ei like it first, so anyone have any ideas as to what i need to do to fix my prob?