[techtalk] Delurk/Getting started

Wed May 23 00:30:56 EST 2001

Hullo. :)
Err.. i'm always terrible at delurking anywhere, and even worse at
asking questions (years on alt.gothic, where the newbies are served
with ketchup), but here goes... I'm *trying* to learn Linux. It ain't
easy, since I don't have it installed anywhere yet, but the books are
helping. At the moment, i'm downloading an ISO of SUsE 7.1, which
seemed to be one of the better distro's for newbies. (Discuss?)

I'm seriously contemplating partitioning off 2-3 gig of my current
windows machine (HP 6545c, Celeron 500, 20gb HD and 191mb) and running
it from there. I know that I have to make a Linux partition, not a
FAT32. Here's where I get confused... After I burn the ISO's onto CD,
will it boot from the CD, or do I have to use my old windows boot
disk? If I have to use the boot disk.. err.. i'll be lost. If I can
boot from CD, will the installer see that there is already a Linux
partition and start the install there? I'm really worried about
something on the windows side getting lost. It's all backed up, but it
would be a PITA to redo it all.

What are the chances if something totally not being compatible? I know
there there are issues with WinModems, and that's not an issue, since
i'm on cable- I don't use the modem, BUT I have a combo card, and the
sound might not work, right? <head explody> From what I understand,
SUsE has a pretty good installer, and pretty good hardware detection,
but i'm not sure about my POS HP being anywhere near Linux-friendly.
Not to mention my cable modem.. i'm not even going to attempt to get
THAT going until i'm better at this. I've heard scary things.

Am I getting in over my head? I have a Linux guru friend that can help
me, but it's finding the time for him to come over that's the problem.
This man lives for install parties :)

That said, i'm a Linux geek at heart, but my brain isn't convinced. I
love listening to people talking about it, and i'm trying SO hard to
absorb everything I read. But i'm still unsteady. 

:sits back and waits with head between knees like the flight attendant
said to:

-- 
Ruhiel
http://ruhiel.noom.com
"bash awk grep perl sed df du, du-du du-du,
vi troff su fsck rm * halt LART LART LART!"- the Swedish BOFH