Totally newbie newb noob here saying hi......
 

Well here i am....another day and another forum...only difference is..im looking through linux tinted spectacles...i am a very seasoned windows user and i am currently running vista 64bit, over the years i have seen many references to linux and how much it better it is over windows, i have always wondered about it but never taken the plunge.

I am here now becasue i stumbled accross backtrack2...this is my first taste of linux and i was quite pleasantly suprised that my internet conection and everything else (well almost) was working...i was expecting it to be like running original dos...typing everything in by hand.

Now i got to this forum becasue i was searching for how to get my wusb54gs wireless adapter working with backtrack2, i found some posts mostly peppered with help from a user called emanueluk, however...i have NEVER experienced linux before and EVERYTHING was foreign to me !! and the posts never mentioned backtrack2, im a little cinfused as i kept hearing things like ubunta and slax and other stuff which you all probably know...i was expecting this backtrack2 to pick up the wireless adapter as it picked up my router and everything else, can anyone point me to a TOTALLY newb guide to getting this adapter working or maybe spoon feed me ;)...this is also an introduction for linux to me and i am interested in learning a bit more about it.

Thanks.

hmmm ill do my homework on backtrack2 and get back to you in a sec....

i use a different "flavor" if you understand because theres literally hundreds if not thousands of "distros" of linux see here for info on the distributions


but however allot have a common bond that you will see most commands for one can be converted to another



hold on eeeerrrrrrttt (tire screatching noise) backtrack2 is a hackers linux it says its for security testing and for finding open ports and stuff on a victom computer

what are you trying to use it for?

Well...i had a look and i am bewildered, i do however like my GUI os so if theres a mainstream one you think i should be looking at as a dual booting partition then give me a heads up, one other little problem, am i right to understand this backtrack 2 will not write to my hdd,s even though i can see them ? i have and can see a 4gb usb flash drive plugged into the usb port and it is my intention to use this untill i get round to creating a dedicated linux partition.

Heh...to be quite honest, i am not really sure !!...it all started by installing dd wrt to my router (linksys wrt54gs v4)i then found out that i could turn it into a dual wan router if i put open wrt on it, thats has no GUI, well not much of one, i also wanted to see if i could hack into my own network, not anyone elses i can assure you, i dont inted to spen a lot of time on it as my daughters want thier wusb54gs back !! i would certainly appreciate your help on my journey though and rest assured im no hacker !!

ok i trust you...

as for a better live cd (doesnt touch hard drive) id say maybe knoppix i think you can also install knoppix to your pin drive as well if you bios supports booting from that you seem to know a bit about bios and firmware so that doesnt seem to be a problem

as for your parts (internet screens hard drives and the like) knoppix is als great at finding those

oh yea people get a little fussy about posting back to back like that use edit like i did like 3 times now on this alone

backtrack2 is (among other things) a “live-cd” distro. This means it is not intended to be installed onto the hard drive, although reading and writing should be possible. I would recommend a more mainstream distro which is actually installed on your hard drive. You can either take one of these quizzes or search the LQ forums to determine which distro is “right for you” (you may even need to try a few before you find one you like).

Also, for your wireless adapter, you may have to use ndiswrapper to get it working (basically, this wraps windows drivers from within linux). There are a lot of posts regarding the correct set up of this (and you’re correct in that Emmanuel_uk appears in many of them).

As an aside, under the name of almost every forum poster, you will see the poster’s current distribution. This will help you to get a feel for what other people have.

yea what he said ;) i personally use debian (in the raw) but its a little overwhelming for somepne not too familiar with command line and doesnt natively have a live cd...

knoppix is a spin-off of debian but has a great gui (i think kde) is natively a live cd and sets up automatically

but its entirely your choice im just pointing you in a good direction

Ok so knoppix looks good to me but how do i now install back track 2 onto it and get it even, i have only seen live boot cd iso versions, what format do i create a partition to put knoppix on ? i can with vista create space and format a new partition but will i also need 3rd party booting software ?

ok simple instructions download the iso use your favorite program to burn it to cd then reinsert the new cd into your drive and reboot your computer if windows does not take over and load your good thus far you will see a screen saying press enter to boot press enter the screen will fill with colorful text wait about 2 minutes when you see your desktop click around until you find the windowed terminal (usually called terminal or xterm) in that box type in sudo fdisk -l write down the drive partitions and such the partitions are labeled like /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 etc.... find the one you can overwrite and then type cfdisk /dev/hd? where as ? is the letter of the drive no number use the arrow keys to move enter to select an action then remember or write down what partition you made reboot the computer by typing in the prompt reboot then when the cd is spit out push it back in hit enter watch carefully and at the title screen quickly type tohd /dev/hd?* where as ? is the letter and * is the number let it do its thing it might ask if you want to install grub if it does say...... well heres where im stumped it might not let you boot windows if you do...


you make your own choice on boot loaders im stumped at that step