Installing linux

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ganonbanned
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Installing linux

Post by ganonbanned » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:33 pm

Im going to be installing linux on my friends computer, I already have a tut. on how to install it, but how do I get rid of win95?

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gannon
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Post by gannon » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:37 pm

lol, it's gone as soon as you format the hard drive to use linux (the installer will do it)

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Post by ganonbanned » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:41 pm

gannon wrote:lol, it's gone as soon as you format the hard drive to use linux (the installer will do it)
cool
just making sure, it may sound noob but ive never done an OS before.

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Post by bicostp » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:41 pm

Wait... 95? How old is this computer!?

If it's a Pentium 1, I wouldn't bother with Gnome or KDE. You should go with FluxBox, IceWM, JWM, or another minimal environment on a slow machine. (be prepared to edit text files for configuration, however... and don't expect a Windows-like experience with Fluxbox.)

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Post by Sparkfist » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:28 pm

If your friend wants a Windows-like look to his Linux install, go with IceWM. They have a theme/skin that looks very much like 95.

And you better not be thinking of installing something like Fedora Core, SuSE 9.x or higher, Debian 3.x. All of these mainstream distros are too bloated with new software and drivers to work with someting like a Pentium or a lowend Pentium II.

Really the best bet would be something like RedHat 9.0. It's pretty good, used it myself. There are a fair number of RPMs and some applications are still made compatible with it in RPM packaging. Just don't use Gnome, it sucks, and only people who haven't used KDE swear by it.
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Post by Ari » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:12 pm

what distro were you planning to install?

I would reccomend Gentoo, but that's just because I'm the kind of nerd that thinks that typing into the terminal for 3 hours to install it is fun. It does run really fast, though, since you can optimise it for your machine.

Though if it's a REALLY old computer with less than 128 megs of RAM, then I would probably go with something like DSL or Puppy Linux, as they allegedly run well on old machines. But I've never tried those, so I don't know how well they work out.

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