I'd like to try out Linux.

Like many others, I do not want my normal machine stuffed up.(a lot are for work). With little knowhow (other than still remembering working knowledge with sco xenix ages back), I'm thinking: 1) have a short trial before deciding which distro to acquire or paid for. 2) do it on an old Pentium my son is playing games with under win98. At least it is not too bad if stuffed up.3) an older distro version might demand less disk space since I've only got 1.7 gb.

Since I have already got a copy of RedHat 6.2 (released in 2000, I think.
Question 1:

Is this version too old even for trying out? Do you not recommend it as a learning point at all?

Question 2:
My old Pentium has Windows 98 in the Primary master disk with 4.3GB. It is also better to avoid touching Windows 98 until the next stage. My plan is: put Redhat onto a spare 1.7 GB drive and install it as the secondary master, move the cdrom as secondary slave drive.

I've read the installation guide briefly. Apparently there are at least 2 ways to boot Linux, depending on how/whether I install LILO: Option 1) Install LILO and write it to MBR of the new 1.7 GB. Modify BIOS setup so that my PC boots from secondary IDE channel. Option 2) Create a boot floppy. But I am not sure whether or not I still need to install LILO on first sector of the boot partition of Redhat residing on the new 1.7GB drive. 3) do it the normal Linux way. Install LILO and copy it to MBR of my 4.3 gb. Let user to decide the oS to boot under LILO. I am not sure how risky this is going to be.

Can someone comment on the 3 options I describe above?

Many thanks and I hope to receive your patience in reading.

oof... thats a really old version of redhat.

Consider downloading Knoppix or a similar LIVE CD and giving that a shot. That way you dont need to muck about with anything on the hard drive. Just boot from the CD and go...

The scary thing is because of the enhancements to the kernel in 2.6, Mandrake 10 may run even better! As long as you're not running services which arent neccesary. Or if you are running a server then dont load the gui.

Downloading and trying the Knoppix CD is the best thing to do.
It is so good that if you are just window shopping, there is no reason to do more.
It's real drawback is that is is a little sluggish since it runs from CD and not your hard drive, but if you realize that it is a great way to poke around and see Linux without actually going to the trouble of installing it.

I acquired the Knoppix Ver 3.3 CD. My PC has winxp installed along with win2k. After booting up from CD, the boot prompt appears. I pressed F2 for help. I selected to enter "knoppix lang=us", the system shows it is doing something for ~15 seconds, clear the screen, displays a penguin image on the top left corner and appears doing nothing more.

I repeat the test by entering knoppix 2 (run level 2), the response is exactly the same. Do I miss anything? Do I have a bad CD copy?

My pc was built ~2001. The motherboard has build-in virus protection (enabled) in the firmware. I do not know if it matters or not.

Any suggestion?

How much RAM does your computer have?
Did you check the md5sum after downloading to be sure the download was good?
It is also possible the burn to CD was bad.
I think there is an option to check the CD on bootup. Maybe try that.

Short answer - if you are interested in "trying out Linux", then you should install a modern release, not one that is several years old. Suppose you were interested in "trying out Intel CPU's" -- which would be the better test: doing test on Pentium 133's manufactured back in the 90's, or P4's manufactured a couple of months ago? My point is that when it comes to technology, it just isn't fair to draw conclusions about a particular topic if all your data points are several years old. -- J.W.