LILO Bootup Order
 

OK, I'm having a few problems with this, so I need help (obviously). I know that it will require probably a simple solution, but I'm far from "Linux-Educated" and any help would be appreciated.

I have Windows XP on my system and I have created a disk partition for Linux, both run perfectly, but me being as most others are, I'm still lodged firmly up Microsoft's arse and at this moment in time, prefer Windows. By default (and probably common sense), LILO chooses Linux over Windows to startup. I'm aware of the existance of the file /etc/lilo.conf but I cannot modify it.

All I want is to be able to fire up my PC and let it load Windows without me doing anything, and as an option, be able to choose Linux at the LILO chooser.

Any help appreciated ASAP.

Why ASAP?

As root, edit lilo.conf and add or change the global stanza to include
default=label of your Windows partition.
You can add something like
timeout = 50
to get a five second delay - set it lower to make it shorter. Or you can turn it off by removing it and the 'prompt' line. Then you'd boot immediately to Windows and have to hold shift or various other odd keys to get to Linux. 'man lilo.conf' for details and be careful.

Ahah, thank you very much. I have to be brutally honest, but I wasnt aware that you could log into KDE as root itself, but only through Konsole. But thank you very much. Just as well some people on here have some common sense....

Cool - glad you got it worked out.

I read your other thread (trying to figure out what the 'common sense' thing meant - and I'm still not sure :D) and I'd just say it might be a good idea not to rely on KDE so much. KDE and Gnome (and most distros with their default graphical runlevels) try to convince people they're running a fully-GUI system like NT (or like how most people use 9x) when Linux is really a CLI system with a GUI slapped on it like an incredibly powerful DOS6x/Win3x system. Booting to a console and doing thing completely with a text editor on configuration files avoids a whole lot of problems and if something goes wrong, you know exactly what you did in order to undo it, rather than trying to figure out what the GUI did.

In other words, to change your user account or to edit lilo.conf, you don't need KDE at all. But, either way, you got it working, so that's good. :)

Avaris15,
Just a side note. Rather than logging into KDE as root it is better to su to root.
If for example you want to edit a system file such as /etc/lilo.conf, and would rather use kwrite rather than a console editor like vim, you can execute kwrite as root also.

Select 'run command' from the K-Menu.
Type in 'kdesu kwrite' or even 'kdesu kwrite /etc/lilo.conf'
You will need to enter the root password.

I'M DONE... suggestions anyone?!
 

I have finally (after several problems), set up this dual-boot system. It works rather nicely, and as I originally wanted, I have Windows loading up as default after 2 seconds. However, I wish to enjoy Linux more and take advantage of it's revolutionary experience. As everybody involved in my threads before, I am using KDE (3.1, i recall) and I get the impression that it is not the most efficient GUI available. Does anybody have any suggestions, or any pointers to help me enjoy my linux experience?! :p thanks again!

Well, it depends on what you mean by efficient. The only really 'full-featured' GUIs for Linux are KDE and Gnome. I think if I was going to use one I might well use KDE, but I'm not sure. So if an IDE is what you want, might as well stick with KDE.

A step down the complexity ladder is stuff like XFCE and Enlightenment. Enlightenment has a lot of 'gee whiz' cool features (that are more trouble than they're worth) and XFCE's nice. A lot of people find them to have the best combination of IDE 'user-friendliness' and WM efficiency (in the sense of lighter resource usage and less stuff to deal with). Some find them the worst of both worlds, though.

A step simpler is your straight window managers. Fluxbox is hugely popular. While experimenting with most everything under the sun, the only things I've used extensively were blackbox, followed by fluxbox (which I used the longest), followed by IceWM. (First version I tried I didn't like; second attempt worked.)

Then there's stuff below that - your defiantly and explicitly minimalist stuff like ratpoison. Some would find it to have the efficiency of 'screen' with absolutely no junk - never even push a window around - while some would find it unusably minimalist. I actually used it quite a bit around the blackbox era and it was kind of neat, but screen's screen. If you're going to run a GUI, you might as well admit it's a GUI.

In my book, any GUI that (1) has only a handful of configuration files (2) whose GUI config tools (if any) configure itself only, and (3) has a lot of xterms up - is an efficient GUI. ;) I just can't stand things like Windowmaker flinging doohickeys all over my desktop and even got to the point where the *boxes questionably functional toolbar became bothersome. So I've found Ice to be the best window herder for me lately. But everybody's different.

The best enjoyment of a Linux system, to me, are the command line tools, the shell, the text files - the 'what is really going on here' stuff. Then the WM/IDE is a convenience and switching from one to the other is easy because as long as you can find the 'xterm' (or ctrl-alt-Fn), you can do whatever you want. You don't rely on a particular doohickey a particular GUI might happen to offer.

Jesus, what can I say? I think I asked for that one! lol. Having absolutely NO experience in this topic whatsoever, I thought it was worth asking. So, do you suggest that I stick with KDE? So, a rather amateur question: what is all this redhat etc stuff?! There's so much to learn....

Oops. Did I get carried away? :)

Quote:

So, do you suggest that I stick with KDE?

Well, I can't really know what to suggest. If you want a full-featured IDE, then sure. But it doesn't cost anything but time and disk space to try out anything and see if you like it.

Quote:

So, a rather amateur question: what is all this redhat etc stuff?! There's so much to learn....

You mean like 'What's a distro'? Or what's specifically up with Red Hat? A distro is just a pre-packaged collection of the kernel, utilities, additional applications, scripts to make it all go, an installer to get it all started - a person or group or company just decides to do some work for you, hoping you'll send them some nachos and beer money. ;)

As far as RH, they want a freaking lot of nachos, so they split into Fedora, which is a distro they give away so that ordinary people can crash their boxes and wipe their filesystems and tell Red Hat why. When RH finds that out, they fix it and sell the bugfixed Fedora to big companies as 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux' for a *whole lot* of nachos. :D

(Disclaimer: that may be a somewhat biased take on RH/Fedora.)