[techtalk] Older versions of distros

[Caitlyn Martin]

Hi, Ericka,

> I finally got around, last night, to cleaning off my second hard drive in
> preparation of installing linux & I have a few questions before I start.
> One is:  Is there any overwhelming reason that I should get the very
> latest version of linux, or would installing an older one be ok?  I
> already have a copy of Redhat 5.0 and I was just going to go ahead and
> install that.

Linux in general, and Red Hat in particular, have come a very long way in
the last couple of years.  The GUI is the area which has changed the most
dramatically.  With 5.0 you will have neiter Gnome nor KDE, and your
libraries will be old enough that you won't be able to run a modern GUI
without updating those too.  Also, many apps rely on newer libraries.

The 2.2 kernel was a big step forward, too.  You'll find that hardware
support is much poorer under 5.0, and the older version of XFree86 won't
support nearly as many video cards.  Sound support will be extremely
limited.  If you have a SoundBlaster, though, it will be supported just
fine.

Graphical admin tools will be far more primitive or missing altogether with
5.0.  If you are comfortable with, or really want to learn the command line,
this won't be an issue.

Red Hat 5.0 is *not* certified Y2K compliant.  For that you need to run at
least 5.2.

My advice:  get the latest distro.  Want to do it cheap?  Go to:
http://www.cheapbytes.com  and pick up a copy of Red Hat 6.1 for a few
dollars.  Or, if you prefer, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian, et al...  Another
alternative is to pick up the November issue of Linux Magazine.  It has a
copy of TurboLinux 4.0 tucked in for free  :)  You can do this for under six
dollars for sure, so why go with an older copy?

Just my .02 worth...  I'm sure others will disagree.

>
> I was also wondering some things about LILO (pardon my extreme
> newbieness).  Will it work properly if installed on a secondary drive
> instead of my C drive?  If the secondary hard drive is slaved to the C?

Unless you are using another tool (like System Commander or Boot Manager),
LILO needs to be on your master boot record on the first hard drive.  It
will let you choose between Linux and whatever OS you are running now.  It
works fine with DOS, Windows (all flavors), and OS/2.  If you are putting
Linux on a second hard drive, at least you don't have to mess with your
existing partitions of the first hard drive, which makes dual (or multi-)
booting a much safer and easier process.

Good luck!
Caity






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