newbie question regarding distros
 

Hey folks,
I've got this old laptop... (P100mhz 40mb and 1gb HD)

And I've been reading that they can make alright linux machines without a GUI... The problem is, I'm still pretty much a complete newbie, I'm still learning the basics of X and the like, and I'm nearly crippled at the shell.

So what's a distro that you all would recommend to to be intalled on such a system with the primary purpose to let me learn how to run linux without X?

Thanks in advance.

Slackware by far...
It will teach the necessary tools of the CLI without forcing you to know everything about Linux to do it.

:)

What part of WA are you from?

Cool

Will the latest release of slackware do what I'm looking for, or do I need to go get an earlier release?

I'm from southwest WA (vancouver)

You can use the latest, and should, IMO. Just don't install any packages related to XWindows and you'll be fine. Have you checked out http://www.linux-laptop.net/ yet?

I agree. The current version is just as capable as earlier releases, yet still maintains excellent abilities in CLI. You will have the latest GCC, which will be nice, and of course the latest related packages.

HOWEVER...

Learning to compile a new GCC from an old/existing one can be a feat of it's own, and in doing so, will teach you quite a bit. If you'd like to do things like this to learn, then I suggest looking into 8.1 and then upgrading the components.

Cool

Alright, Thanks for the help.
I'm downloading Slack9 as of right now...

Considering I've done basically nothing (other than dos) outside of a GUI, where's a good place to start to find out what I can do and how to do it?

The link in my sig, the tutorial over at www.linux.org and really by just reading threads here, reading man pages on your system, and trial/error.

If you are really enthusiastic, you can press TAB about 3 times and it will display literally thousands of applications, you can then browse that and read man pages on those apps.

:)

I suggest though, maybe reading through the Rute tutorial which can be found on www.google.com/linux with a search for "Rute users tutorial".

:)

Cool

Alright, so I need a little more help...:(

I can only express what I'm feeling right now as ARRRHHHHG.
I've spent all day trying to install slackware9 on the laptop mentioned above.
I made the proper boot and root disks in order to install from a PCMCIA cdrom drive only to reach the conclusion that there's something wrong with my floopy drive... (I created images from both windows and linux on a different machine, neither of which worked)

All I can really do, is pull the hard drive and put it in a desktop to copy the files that I need for an install, I've got the 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adaptor and it works well...

So here's my next question:
Is it possible, and if so, how can I install Slack 9 from a 1gb hard drive without a boot disk?

Thanks in advance, I don't know what I would do without you guys!

Hmmm...

Without a boot disk I don't know how you'd install the OS.

However... You can put the drive in the desktop, install linux on it (be sure you have compatible hardware archtecture) then plop it back into the laptop and hope no one was watching :D

Then, you'll probably wanna do a kernel recompile to fix it all up for your hardware requirements (this too will help you learn CLI).

But yeah, just make sure you install your boot loader (lilo) to the disk, not to the MBR as you normally would (that way it should act as the MBR when placed back in the laptop).

HTH

Cool

I was really hoping it wouldn't have to come to that...
I'm not sure what the deal is with my floppy drive, it seemed to read the boot disk alright, but then when it asked for the root disks, it took #1 of 5 okay, but kept giving me I/O errors for 2... maybe I should just try a different method of writing the disk image... I tried RAWRITE in windows and the command cat as well as another which I cannot remember (ff or something like that) in linux...

Before I try to install it on another system, is there anyway I can verify a floppy image?

edit:
I forgot to add, that none of the images I need for my floopies are on the 9 iso (I did run the md5sum check before burning so I know that my ISO isn't bad), I've found them online from an slackware 8.1 FTP, might that have anything to do with it?