Linux newbie - Distro?
 

Hey, I am newish to the linux world. I have an older computer that got formatted out that I would like to put Linux on, It is an old celeron 600 with 64 megs of ram (planning to up this it'll accept more) and onboard video. I was wondering, what distribution would be best that would run fairly smoothly, and be easy to use for someone who is just getting into learning the basics?

or, would it be possible, perhaps, to have a second harddrive on my windows PC with linux on it, and be able to switch between the two?

This gets asked all the time -- use the forum search function and check the distributions forum to see what others have said on this topic. You can also check out www.distrowatch.com to get an overview of your various choices.

One piece of advice I will give you is to avoid a heavyweight window manager like KDE or Gnome. 64 MB is just not enough to run the modern versions of either (you could run an older version, but they tend to be more buggy, and most distros include something newer). My knee-jerk response for you is to try Damn Small Linux, which is a LiveCD, and see how it works on your hardware. I've only ever run it once, so I can't say much more than to try it out.

Upgrading your RAM would definitely be a good idea -- try to go for 256 MB if possible.

[Edit to answer your second question]

Yes, that's perfectly possible -- do a forum search and a google on dual booting.

I think you should use slackware (Either 9.1, or 10), with some light window manager such as FLubox, cause I think Gnome/KDe would cause a few problems
The Good thing is that slackware comes with a load of lightweight window manager

What Id really like to do is throw the hard drive in my main box, and dual boot it on a slave hard drive. I just dont want to risk screwing up my windows drive somehow.. Ill look into it and see what works best I guess. It seems that the other box is pretty much on it's last legs. I tried throwing some ram in and it went insane

Well, you could always use the old thing as
a server/router/firewall without installing X
on it ... 64 megs of RAM is plenty for that.


Cheers,
Tink

Jacking the HD out of the old PC to see if i can salvage it for the current box
Wish me luck ><

I have a 566 Celeron with 128Mb, and Fedora core plus Gnome runs like a snail on it. You might look into Cobind.

[edit] I should point out that this is my work computer. I haven't resolved this for two reasons: 1. Can't reinstall at the moment 2. Don't care as I use a small window manager: Blackbox.

A slack install would be quite tough on a noob

also having linux on a seperate partition but same harddrive is not risky. Resizing a windows partition to creat room might be though.

I got the 2nd HD in. Its 15 gigs. got my slackware cds burned, fiured out how to format the slave hd, now going to try and install, and hope it works;)

Okay I have gotten through install, and Im to where I need to configure Lilo. This is where I get confused. Do I just autoinstall Lilo, into the MBR, and will that span over both harddrives?

Lilo doesn't span anything :)

It just goes and picks the OS you want to
boot from the device it lives on. And yes,
MBR would be a good choice.



Cheers,
Tink