i have a super computer I dont feel like writing the specs though

Well like I said, this is my OLD computer (I am too scared to put linux on my good one) I have a p4, 120 gig, 512 mb ram.....etc, etc, but that is my good computer, which I get nervous about putting a whole new OS on, so I thought Id try it on this old one.

Hell Monkey: I would take a look at your hardware before switching. What do you intend on using this machine for? If you want it to have internet access, you'll have to have an external modem. For a choice of file system, I'd recommend Ext3. It's like Ext2, but you don't have to go through a 20-minute filesystem check (and if anything's wrong, a forced fix which could do more harm than good) when you don't shutdown properly.

Basslord: You're right about that other filesystem, it's called ReiserFS.

well like I said, I was just going to put linux on this old computer to try it out, and if I liked it, I was going to put it on my good computer.

Edit: ok, I got a friend of mine to download mandrake linux for me. However, once all the iso's are downloaded, will he just drag the iso's into the cd's folder, or is there a specific way that he needs to burn them?

hey, i'm completely new also. i'm using redhat 9, and it's super cool to work with. if your like me, you either got bored with windows, wanna program, or got hacked because xp is insecure (all of the above!) anyways, redhat 9 is great, i also have slackware and some other distro. the bluecurve is nice, i like the customization abilities and it has some cool built in stuff, particularly the irc and all the programming stuff. but def. try it before you give up on it. ok? don't forget the man stuff. that's cool too. the hardest part i've found is learning the commands, like chmod and all the switches. like ls is good for finding things, esp when trying to find a .gz or .bin file. installing things have been hard for me to figure out, slowly but surely. just stick with it. if you want, you can msg me on yahoo (bnc_627_bnc) or aim (b627forever) and i'll chat with you and we can share what we learn. that goes for anyone. feel free to msg me. ok?

good luck.

btw, redhat 9 came with
GAIM with is an aim substitute, connects with aim and what not. i don't know bout mandrake.

thanks, I will definately be talking to you on aim. I am sure I will need a lot of help. Also, I was looking at the mandrake file sizes, and they are all about 728,700,000 bytes (from
here ) Now I might be misunderstanding this, but all my cds are 700 mb. Do the downloads come with other files or what? How am I supposed to put them on a disk when they are this size?

bump

I just installed RedHat 7.1 (from an old set of 3 CDs which came along with a "Bible" series book) on a PII, 32 MB RAM, Network card, 2 GB IDE HDD, MFY, CD-ROM. Infact, I installed it as a server which according to the literature needs less disk space (about 400 MB).

At that RAM, what I didn't get was a GUI. So OK, I have to dig into the "man" ual pages and book and edit files by hand (vi). But this is a server I set up for training and all I had to do was to follow the defaults.

Then edited one line (just one line) for enabling "telnet".

Installed an "rpm" (5 minutes) to enable Apache server and changed the default web page location. (2 line).

Finally installed an "rpm" to enable "php'.

Added users.

Ready to go. Now capable of rendering "static pages" (no database), basic training in Unix fundamentals etc.

BTW, this to any "old"bie. Which takes less RAM? mySQL or PostGres? Generally?

What I am saying is Linux is easy to install and manage. While Linux runs equally well on old hardware, I don't think it "likes" old hardware particularly. It probably blazes along on upgraded stuff.

Cheers.

End

Well, for me, either Red Ha 9.0 or Fedora Core 1 will do, as both of it almost the same.. ;-)
Athough I'm still newbie to Linux, but hei... its interesting though when I was challenged to set up a Samba server..

It depends on what program you're using to burn the CDs. Usually, opening the .iso in the program will show you what files it contains, and how much space those files will take on the CD. You can then start burning the CD.
To get the amount of megabytes from bytes you don't divide by 1,000,000 but by 1048576. This is due to the way computers work. The .iso files are just under 695MB and should easily fit on your CDs.

Most CD burning programs have an option where you burn a CD from an image. That's what ISO's are...CD images. And there are other types of CD images as well. So your friend would want to select to burn a CD for an image, then make sure that ISO is selected for the file type, locate the ISO to burn, and he can do the rest from there.

And might I add...GAIM rules. I saw that and I was laughing my a** off. Great little program plus you can do more than just AIM with it...you can also do MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and what not.

Man, I feel really stupid. Its because the sizes or whatever always double, right, like 64, 128, 512, etc... Anyway, thank you all for your help, and if you see this at the top of list, please check it, because I dont want to keep starting threads for my ultra-noob questions.