[plug] Distributions (again)

[Leon Brooks]

Robert Potter wrote:
>> I would certainly suggest Red Hat 5.2 for any new user, I found debian to have
>> just that little bit of extra complexity that might put such a user off. That
>> said, I'm now moving over to Debian 2.1.

As am I.

> As a new user I would agree RH5.2 is very nice.  I've set up a couple of
> boxes now as dual boot and letting RH do the install and put LILO into the
> MBR was very straightforward.

The big difference happens with a difficult machine. With Windows, if
the machine won't go, about all you can do is swap hardware. With Linux,
you can use that bash shell (Alt-F2 in RH install to get that console
window) to great advantage _IF_ you know what you're doing. For example,
I have managed to get Win98(!) to install on some machines by booting
the RH install and setting up FAT partitions with it, where W98 would
never agree with the hard disk's ideas, nor the BIOS's ideas, about the
disk geometry. For another example, you can hand-craft and hand-run a
lilo.conf to get a system working when the install program loses the
plot at the install-boot-loader step (almost the last thing RH does).

> Biggest job I've had is configuring dial-up-networking using PPP - which
> still isn't working, but that's got more to do with my trying to figure out
> what the Murdoch dial-up server is expecting than anything else I think.

Log in by hand using minicom and either capture the session or have a
pen handy.

-- 
Death and taxes are inevitable; but death doesn't get worse every year.