[techtalk] newbie questions

[Henti Smith]

> hello all....

greetings :) 

> 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). =)

not a problem at all ... everybody is welcome in the linux family :) 

> 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).

you can indeed ... 

You'll need separate particians for the distro's. Something like.

hda1	64MB	swap ( can be used for all linux dists )
hda2	1gig	Redhat
hda3	1gig	Debian
hda4	1gig	S.U.S.E

you can even mount all the dists while one is running so you can access data
on one dists while in another .. 

> 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?

it's very difficalt ... It really depends on your personal preferance .. 
I use Mandrake at the office.. Redhat at home ( changing soon ) and am
looking at doing Stampede next ... 

> 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?

there is .. I can't remember the exact address .. but I can give you a good
place to start .http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~conradp/linux/

Hope that helps :) 

Henti 

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