Hi All,

I have a Dell Inspiron Laptop 2.6 Ghz with 1024 MB of RAM. Attached to this latop I have an external Maxtor 250Gb HardDrive.

I am seeking to install LINUX so it runs through the external hard drive, and run Windows through the internal Hard Drive.. Is this possible?? Any pointers as to how this might be done.

Thank you kindly,

SSMe

With sound cards you have to watch on the variations. There are a lot of cards with more or less the same names that don't have at all the same components.

I think most of the Creative Live! Series works pretty well. That would be a good place to start.

There's a big list of what's supported here

The first place to look for screensavers would be in Xandros Networks. Add the unsupported repository in XN and you'll likely have more to choose from.

As for the harddrive thing, if your computer will boot from the external drive (may have to make a change in boot order in the BIOS) it shouldn't be a problem.

Just direct the Linux installer to the external drive, then tell it to install the boot loader (GRUB or LILO) on the external drive as well. That way, when if the drive is plugged in when you start the machine, you'll boot to Linux. If it's not, you'll boot to Windows. Just be very careful about which partitions you tell the installer to do things to. Keep them straight, both for paritioning and installing, and for the installation of the boot loader.

If you use something like Xandros or Knoppix that has good hardware detection, you'll even be able to plug that drive into other computers and boot them from it as well, provided of course that they can boot from an external drive.

One of the best things that I have found about linux is that if one distro doesn't work well with one of my computers I can always try and fix it. Better yet, I can also try a different distro. I have a few different computers (new and very old) I have different distros on each of them. There are certain distros, SuSe, Fedora and Slackware that will install and have almost everything running. Out of those Suse is probably the easiest, then Fedora, then Slack. You have to realize that Linux is not the same as other OS, most of the time it is a lot more compact. For example, graphics cards, the vast majority of distros don't have the drivers available and you need to install them yourself. They don't know what type of graphics card you have (Nvidia or ATI) so why have the ATI info when you have Nvidia. So what this does is give you the oppurtunity to creat an OS that is geared to how you use a computer.(kinda reminds me of a certain company that makes there own computer and OS) If you listen to music, you get those programs, if you like to edit pictures, you get those programs, etc. Another thing that I have found is that you can find the vast majority of your answers on the distros forums or just by googling it. No doubt that there are a few bugs in a lot of the distro but so do the OS's that you pay big money for. So keep learning and having fun with the free beer.

Last edited: Friday, November 11, 2005 at 1:09:06 PM

^ Nice post.

I downloaded 56k's volume control script and plugged in my MP3 player to line in on my sound card. Works like a charm.

@ NUTS!,

Good advice!!!!

For now my desktop is going back to Xandros. I am going to get familiarized with the world of Linux. Learn the ropes then start to muck about more with the distros.

Strike me pink, and I thought this was going to be a bit easier.

Strewth!!!

@ FoFoFi,

Curious to know where this volume control script is..... Don't think I have ever heard of it.

SK

Last edited: Friday, November 11, 2005 at 10:19:02 PM

http://www.ezupa.com/thinktanks/VolumeControl.cs

Put it in game/client/scripts/, the in your main.cs, put: exec("game/client/scripts/VolumeControl.cs"); at the bottom.

Pressing Shift at the same time as the minus symbol will turn the
sound effects down. Shift and the equals symbol turns it up.

Pressing Control at the same time as minus symbol will turn the game
music down. Control and the equals symbol turns it up.

Pressing the minus symbol alone will turn the master volume down. And
pressing equals symbol alone turns it up.

Last edited: Friday, November 11, 2005 at 11:50:06 PM

SHEESH

All these headaches are why I dont want to switch to linux quite yet

Id go try mac if they had a system as good as mine I built 3 years ago for the same $

B

@ Bolo,

Try Linux, there are set backs but I am sure it will give your desktop a new life. Go to Ubuntu.com and try the live version of the distro. The only problem I seem to have its the hardware detection of my sound card, other than that everything else is OK.

SK

Will it recognize my RAID?...i wonder

B

@B

Yes, It should if you use a 2.6.x kernel. It actaully handles my dual HT intel chips and SATA drives better than Windows

@ B,

Time to back up your hard drive, and install Linux. Once you get it up and running, you will never go back to Windows!!!

@ IM/Linux User,

I am seeking to install Open Office 2 into Xandros, can you please post instructions for a newbie like me. I tried to install it using Xandros Networks however only version 1.1 is available. I think they should try and move in with the times.

Please assume that my Office tarball is in the home directory.

SK

Last edited: Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 11:37:53 AM

@roo
Just found out an easier way to launch a server. Still have to cut the pref.cs from the /home/user/.bravetree/thinktanks/game/server and place in the original server folder. Then all you have to do is edit the thinktanksdedicated script in /home/user/ThinkTanks folder. Just change the line COMMAND="./$EXENAME $ARGS -prefs ~/server/serverprefs.cs -dedicated $PARAMS" towards the bottom to=> COMMAND="./$EXENAME $ARGS -prefs ~/server/serverprefs.cs -dedicated -mission GREEN -game TS $PARAMS" this way it starts it automatically.

GAAAH!!! MY SYSTEM CRASHED AGAIN! I tried to install Ubuntu again, and after I rebooted it to finish the install, it stopped cold after getting ready to install the packages! Can anyone help me? This has happened twice now.
Before it did this, it said it couldn't finish copying all the packages to the disk, and maybe I'd run out of space, but I had 13.5 GIG reserved for Linux!
EDIT: I'm downloading the ISOs for Debian and Gentoo as I speak. Should I try one of them instead?

Last edited: Sunday, November 13, 2005 at 9:01:42 PM

Woots!

I have been playing xtux and I gotta say it is really cool. If anyone else has it or wants to give it a shot, I can set up a server and we can play together.

@ 445,

I'll give it a try later on!!!!!

@ NUTS!/Roo,

If you are looking to setup a server for TT, then give VectorLinux a go. The Linux distro is so fast that it makes my desktop seem like a Ferrari. Check it out at vectorlinux.com. I would recommend that you download the SOHO version.

Note that although the system is Slackware based, it is made simply enough for newbies like me to install it.

SK

Any help for me?

@Rev
Not sure what you should try. Not sure why Ubuntu won't load. Ubuntu is debian and I have never tried Gentoo.

@SK
Yes I have tried Vector Linux. Only problem I had with it is that it didn't come with the kernel headers so installing the nvidia drivers could be tricky. After trying a few distros that are based off slack I have decided to just use slack.

@roo
Whas that a linux Roo server I saw earlier today. Did you try my idea of just changing that one line in the dedicatedserver script? That way all you have to do is just click on it.

@ NUTS!,

I noticed that too, however I quickly found the solution by tapping into their forums. I tried their latest version of SOHO last night, My only frustration was as following [This is a copy of an e-mail that I sent to SLUG (www.slug.org.au)]:

Partition
SLUG,

I am a linux newbie, and I curious if there is a rule of thumb when it comes to
partitioning the hard drive(using fdisk). I have a desktop with 1024 MB of RAM,
and an IDE hardrive (80Gb).

How much space would I have to allocate for /dev/hda, dev/hda1, and /hda2. I have
been reading through the Linux Bible (Wiley Books), and while the process seems
pretty straight forward, I am stuck as to how I can partition my hard disk
adequately for optimised performance. How much memory should I allocate for each
partition?

Partition Updated

SLUG,

By /dev/hda, dev/hda1, and /hda2 in my previous e-mail - Partition - I meant
Root, Swap, and Home.

I know what the purpose of each of them is, however given my previous
specifications I am seeking to optimise my memory use.

SK

@ Rev. Run(SA),

Gentoo is a rather difficult distro to install. You pretty much have to install everything manually yourself. If you aren't that competent with Linux I would try something a bit easier to install like Xandros or Ubuntu or SuSe.

Having used the above three, I would highly recommed Xandros (Debian based) which is properly a very underrated distro with a very powerful installer. Give it a try. E-mail me (ssme@iinet.net.au) if you need help as I have a few tips that I have learned over the last week.

SK

Yeppa NUTS!
That was my Linux game off my dualboot desktop
W0000000000000T!
Gonna need some bucks for the 24/7 server
dont want to use inferior hardware but I can serve just fine from here
Heh! Heheh! Heh! Heeeeeeens!!!!

@Roo

As far as I can tell, the only time a TT server uses very much processor is during reload. So, for instance, if you only host one game you could host on an ancient PC. I was able to host a TT game smoothly on a 132 Mhz Mac from 1995.

If you host more than 1 game then you'll create lag in the others during reload if it uses 100% of the processor, but it is only momentary. On the Mac each game served uses about 13 MB of RAM.

So if you are only going to serve a few games simultaneously, you may not need many bucks. I don't think most players would mind a few seconds of lag per 15 minute game. If you look at the IPs of the shockwave servers you'll see that they run multiple games on the same machine and I don't notice any lag there.

The expensive part is the bandwidth.

Linux + cheap old PCs = good TT server = YAY!

Last edited: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 at 12:06:27 PM