> Nobody here wants to stop you from paying Billies luxury... So go on if you
> please. Everyone his choice, no???

Yup. Just sharing an opinion.

>
> But, every average person with the will, some study (= fun), and a couple of
> good books (= not costly,I loan them from the local library), some help (= see
> below) can get a long way practically for free.

Most people don't have either the time nor the inclination. The average user has problems opening Word.

> In this way it's possible to invest a lot more in the hardware (= see my
> credits).

Not important to most people. Raging fast hardware doesn't matter when you're still trying to open Word.

> If you happen to study at a university in the more techie directions like
> physics, chemistry, maths,... you automatically get acquainted with UNIX, in
> this way the stepover shouldn't be problematic at all.

Most people don't enter those disciplines. Though, I agree, if you do you will probably become acquainted with UNIX. Though not good enought to use it for everyday tasks.

> I for instance have NEVER called a supportline on any issue whatsoever, always
> have I been helped by FRIENDLY people all over the world...

Well I wasn't. To each his own, you know?

Incidentally, if I WAS going to try Linux again, I would go with Mandrake.

---

Just my Windows pence worth...

Why I use Windows -> Software actually has working install routines that you don't have to manually edit / finish off. That really bugs me in Linux! (I know, I know, its hard to make one with so many different Kernels etc. available, but its still really annoying for the non technically minded).

If your seriously looking for an alternative then (as an avid windows user) I recommend you get yourself onto SuSE 9.1. The new Kernel makes it easy... ;) and so far (praise the lord) I haven't had to recompile the kernel to get anything to work!

Its the only Linux distribution I have managed to get my head round so far. The partitioning in Linux is a little (understatement of the year) strange for the uniniciated but once you have it up and running its for me the best to understand and use if you have a windows background.

For an overview of how I install SuSE got to http://downloads.rwa-rail.co.uk/Ian_Bradshaw_SuSE.pdf (forget page i, this doc was originally for a project I was working on so it's been edited for SuSE install only, as the other stuff was not for public distribution).

It's based on an 7.x install so the screen shots are a little old now, but the principals remain the same. Also, I now use GRUB instead of LILO as it seems to like Windows dual boot better.

My partitioning reccommendations... feel free to shout at me! (as I'm sure the linux experts will!)

- SWAP = I generally go for 1GB regardless of what RAM is available.
- / = 500mb

Create an LVM partition for the rest of the disk space. This makes it easier to change volume sizes etc. in the future without a reboot.

- usr = 2GB
- var = 512mb
- tmp = 512mb
- opt = 2GB
- home = 1GB

Change the sizes based on your hdd capacity, but generally I keep the proportions the same. Its also good not to use all your LVM space so you can add partitions later, e.g. a dedicated one for oracle, or webserver files etc.

One final thing if anyone has read this far, for your first go you will bugger your windows (however many how-to's or instructions you follow to the letter) so do it on a seperate disk with your windows boot disk unplugged until you get the hang of it, and preferably, use VMWare untill you get going (you can then run Linux under windows).

Have a lot of fun!

---

http://brainfade.net

Surely all these small? packages are usefull...

Greetz ;-))

Gnoppix had some kind of issue as well (as i recall, it would continously reboot?). The only major issue i'm having w/ morphix is that i CAN net to my Mac, but NOT browse thru my router.

> > I didn't. it wouldn't communicate with the outside world . I happen to
> (gasp!)
> > like Gnome, and i like the look and feel of Morphix. It has issues w/
> > networking, but i can and will refine it till it works. Knoppix is nice,
> > detected my hardware, and generally worked out of the box (or burner).
> Knoppix
> > 3.7 is available, but defaults to german. (lang=us works).
> >
> > lots of people looking for a new OS now.
> >
> > > if you like knoppix you're gonna luv mepis
> > >
> > > http://www.mepis.org
> > >
> >
>
>
> If you like Gnome, there's Gnoppix.
> I think the Knoppix disk boots a lot faster though.
>
> DamnSmallLinux is usable.
> Kurumin fits on a 200 meg mini disk. (It's in Portuguese)
>
> www.distrowatch.com
>
> There's a FreeBSD live cd called Freesbie
>
>
>

>
> Come on now cut me some slack, I have Knoppix and Suse downloaded and burned I
> have the CC downloaded, am just waiting for the moon and stars to align and
> the age of Sagittaruis to begin,,,,,,,;o)
>
You have to wait till the dawning of the age of Acquarius,
Until the Moon is in the Sevent House,
before you start one of these evil contraptions on your box...
or you get a Spell from Billie Pie catcher...

Beware of loose running WUWU's
Above all have fun!

Greetz ;-)))

> > Well I am not sure about going the Linux way, it is starting to get
> expensive,
> > time to download Linux, time to burn CD, cost of CD, OH but it will be
> fun
> > learning something NEW, yyyyyeeeehhhhhaaaaaaaaaa, I am goin to go for
> it,
> > Starts looking for a Linux to English translation BOOK lololol...
> >
> Pascal, I presume you read my message ID: 36945 specially directed to you, to
> ease your startup with KNOPPIX?
>
> Supplementary advice : Find someone with a cable connection...
>
> Greetz ;-)))
>
>

Come on now cut me some slack, I have Knoppix and Suse downloaded and burned I have the CC downloaded, am just waiting for the moon and stars to align and the age of Sagittaruis to begin,,,,,,,;o)

---

Semper Eadem
So long Paul, it has been a hell of a ride.

Park your ego's, fire up the computers, Science YES, Credits No.

> Well I am not sure about going the Linux way, it is starting to get expensive,
> time to download Linux, time to burn CD, cost of CD, OH but it will be fun
> learning something NEW, yyyyyeeeehhhhhaaaaaaaaaa, I am goin to go for it,
> Starts looking for a Linux to English translation BOOK lololol...
>
Pascal, I presume you read my message ID: 36945 specially directed to you, to ease your startup with KNOPPIX?

Supplementary advice : Find someone with a cable connection...

Greetz ;-)))

---

Well I am not sure about going the Linux way, it is starting to get expensive, time to download Linux, time to burn CD, cost of CD, OH but it will be fun learning something NEW, yyyyyeeeehhhhhaaaaaaaaaa, I am goin to go for it, Starts looking for a Linux to English translation BOOK lololol...

---

Semper Eadem
So long Paul, it has been a hell of a ride.

Park your ego's, fire up the computers, Science YES, Credits No.

WOW! Downloaded Knoppix iso, made cd, booted and, well all I can say is it works.

It recognised all the hardware, AMD xp3200 etc., and my wireless mouse and keyboard.

I have installed/used linux professionaly and personally (SUSE, Redhat, Slackware, Debian etc.) but this is the first time I have had a system just boot straight up. Don't know if it is the one for me but it will be a great standby in the event of a hard drive failure. I will give it a good thrashing later.

For anyone who has never tried linux I cannot think of a better way to dip your toe in the water.

10 out of 10 for ease of installation. (well ok, there is no installation, just setup you NIC after booting and away you go)

---

<b><i>...only a fool never makes a mistake!<b><i>

Thanks for spreading all this info. It is the proof that the Linux friendly people are willing to expose freely their knowledge / expertise, something that cannot always be said from the fancy cardbox selling software firms...

PS : Yggdrasyl (the tree of life) used to be a Linux package but through the years it went out of my focus. Does it still exist? Just wondering.

Greetz ;-)))

Wine is a little bit flaky. It runs if you have normal programs which access standard libraries, but things don't work if the software tries to use the hardware directly or tries to access some sneaky windows handles.
The Wineserver sometimes stays in a zombie state if the windows app crashes.


Wine is just an adapter that lets win executable run under linux.. not an emulator. I've seen Xnews connect to the net faster (5%) under Wine than it did under Win98 or XP on my home boxes.
An true emulator would be very slow, but would truly simulate a windows install.

> So do these LiveCDs create the full filesystem in a ramdisk? And how much ram
> do they realistically need to run?
>
> If you're running from a ram disk, you could also use the
> -return_results_immediately switch. This will return each result as it
> finishes so at least if you crash, presumably you'll only loose the current
> work unit.
>
> I think it's actually a good idea to use this switch anyway so your results
> get returned sooner to berkeley which helps with the time taken to award
> credit as the system isn't waiting on just your result to perform the
> validation.
>
> Ned
>

Knoppix cloop to uncompress disk images off the CD as it goes.
Technically, the /home folder is in ramdisk, and disappears on reboot.
If you play with knoppix, you can specify a persistent home directory setup on a storage device and have it scan for a file on your disk, and mount the file as your home directory.


Absolute minimum to run knoppix with KDE desktop is 128 megs of ram. My p2 laptop has 160 megs of ram.
When it had a hard drive, it helped to have a swapfile located on my fat partition to handle swapping memory.

When Beta Testing LHC and Boinc, I used a 128 meg USB key to store my results and boinc executable.

> I didn't. it wouldn't communicate with the outside world . I happen to (gasp!)
> like Gnome, and i like the look and feel of Morphix. It has issues w/
> networking, but i can and will refine it till it works. Knoppix is nice,
> detected my hardware, and generally worked out of the box (or burner). Knoppix
> 3.7 is available, but defaults to german. (lang=us works).
>
> lots of people looking for a new OS now.
>
> > if you like knoppix you're gonna luv mepis
> >
> > http://www.mepis.org
> >
>


If you like Gnome, there's Gnoppix.
I think the Knoppix disk boots a lot faster though.

DamnSmallLinux is usable.
Kurumin fits on a 200 meg mini disk. (It's in Portuguese)

www.distrowatch.com

There's a FreeBSD live cd called Freesbie

> WINE is slow.
>
> From my "Local Connection Status" page:
>
> Status: Connected
> Duration: 4 days, 22 hours, 17 minutes
> Speed: 100 mbps
>
> No problems with Windows here! Why change when it ain't broke?
>
> Plus: Linux isn't free. You pay for support, and you WILL need support since
> Linux is so damn cryptic. Unless you want to try forums or chats, of course,
> where you get to listen to people yell "RTFM!" over and over.
>
> Yeah, I already tried Linux. 0 fun.
>

Nobody here wants to stop you from paying Billies luxury... So go on if you please. Everyone his choice, no???

But, every average person with the will, some study (= fun), and a couple of good books (= not costly,I loan them from the local library), some help (= see below) can get a long way practically for free.
In this way it's possible to invest a lot more in the hardware (= see my credits).
If you happen to study at a university in the more techie directions like physics, chemistry, maths,... you automatically get acquainted with UNIX, in this way the stepover shouldn't be problematic at all.
I for instance have NEVER called a supportline on any issue whatsoever, always have I been helped by FRIENDLY people all over the world...

Greetings from Belgium ;-)))
PS : And I'm probably a lot older than most people on this board...-grin-

---

WINE is slow.

From my "Local Connection Status" page:

Status: Connected
Duration: 4 days, 22 hours, 17 minutes
Speed: 100 mbps

No problems with Windows here! Why change when it ain't broke?

Plus: Linux isn't free. You pay for support, and you WILL need support since Linux is so damn cryptic. Unless you want to try forums or chats, of course, where you get to listen to people yell "RTFM!" over and over.

Yeah, I already tried Linux. 0 fun.

---

> You don't NEED a hard drive if you have enough RAM. I downloaded the BOINC
> source code, compiled it myself and got seti running inside the RAMdisk that
> knoppix sets up at boot. The problem with this of course is that if you have
> to reboot or it crashes somehow, you lose everything. Next time you set up
> BOINC, you will be assigned a new hostID. To solve this (since this computer
> does not have a hard drive) I set up an SMB share on my windows box and
> mounted it into the knoppix directory structure. I store all the files there
> so even if I reboot, everything is still there. All I have to do is re-mount
> the share and fire off the client. The same could be done with another linux
> box of course.
>

So do these LiveCDs create the full filesystem in a ramdisk? And how much ram do they realistically need to run?

If you're running from a ram disk, you could also use the -return_results_immediately switch. This will return each result as it finishes so at least if you crash, presumably you'll only loose the current work unit.

I think it's actually a good idea to use this switch anyway so your results get returned sooner to berkeley which helps with the time taken to award credit as the system isn't waiting on just your result to perform the validation.

Ned

---

*** My Guide to Compiling Optimised BOINC and SETI Clients ***
*** Download Optimised BOINC and SETI Clients for Linux Here ***

I use Linux Terminal Services project (lstp.org) setup in the same manner.
I boot each node from a netboot (rom-o-matic.net) floppy and it gets its OS from the ltsp server.
then an rc script runs that kicks off boinc from that node's home directory (NFS) on the ltsp server.
I have 12 nodes running this way. Not trivial to setup but once you get it going it is great.
Cheers,
Super-T

---

> Booting the liveCD of knoppix, presumably linux needs write access to a HD
> partition to run and store the boinc/seti files as it works. I assume a fat32
> partition would do just fine for this?

You don't NEED a hard drive if you have enough RAM. I downloaded the BOINC source code, compiled it myself and got seti running inside the RAMdisk that knoppix sets up at boot. The problem with this of course is that if you have to reboot or it crashes somehow, you lose everything. Next time you set up BOINC, you will be assigned a new hostID. To solve this (since this computer does not have a hard drive) I set up an SMB share on my windows box and mounted it into the knoppix directory structure. I store all the files there so even if I reboot, everything is still there. All I have to do is re-mount the share and fire off the client. The same could be done with another linux box of course.

---

A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
For rankings, history graphs and more, check out:
My BOINC stats site

Ned, Big Thanks for every info.

Originally I was an Apple adept (that is Apple ][, ][plus, ][e, Mac - I left in the late nineties because of cost (supporting two different branches of computers at home) and education turning more towards PC's in Belgium).
For years I missed the spirit and the adventurous times of the beginning days with Bill Wozniak and Steven Jobs...
(Before that I used to program with punched cards on an IBM 360 -grin- and in terminal mode on an PDP 11 -Digital Equipment-)
The days of wonder came back in another form... Ygdrasyl was my first contact with Linux (on a 80386). Gradually Linux became more user friendly and attractive.
Needless to say that I was sold...

Greetings Keep Software Free in Europe, ;-))))