[techtalk] newbie questions

[Shelly L. Hokanson]

hello all....

since i found this list a couple weeks ago, i've had a few questions
come to mind... probably silly ones, but i'm a winNT admin - turned -
linux - newbie  (of about 6 months now). =)

1 - can multiple distros of linux be dual-booted?  can't find that
answer anywhere, though i'm sure it's a case of
why-the-heck-would-ya-want-to-do-that...   i thought of it out of
curiosity about the different distributions.... i have swappable hard
drive bays and 3 machines to play with at home, but i've run out of hard
drives (i've got win98, NT4, redhat 6.0, and mandrake 6.1)... wondering
if i can dual boot any of the linux ones (not with windows).

2- speaking of distros, any preferences? mandrake and redhat seem to be
essentially the same, mandrake having more "fun" type stuff like cd
burning utils installed at the getgo....   i've been told that caldera
is good for business type installs, servers....  how about slackware?
what's the pros and cons of each?

3- and my final question for the day..... is there a magic place on the
net to find references to hardware model numbers, etc? (something like a
www.windrivers.com but for linux).... for example, i have a slew of
network cards here - i've gotten a couple working in linux because
they're well marked with make and model - but what about the ones that
aren't marked? anyplace like windrivers that has pics, or just a
comprehensive list of linux-compatible nics? i'm guessing anything
that's *not* pnp will work.... am i on the right track here?

thanks alot...   =)

shelly


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