The XMEN Clan Forums

I want to do a dual-boot for my laptop. I only have a 30 gig hd and I want 20 gig for XP. UC's College of Engineering requred an XP/Red Hat dual boot. I had Red Hat on an old box for a while, but got bored of it. I figure maybe I should give linux a second chance.

What I want to use it for:
programming
spread sheets
word processing
web browsing (possibly & wireless)

can't think of what else atm...

ATM, I'm debating fedora or mandrake or maybe even Red Hat 9

Any ideas?

I wouldn't use RH9, it's old and not so well supported. FC would be better, IMO, if you like RH.

Mandrake might be OK. I know there were some problems with 10.0 or early 10.1 versions, but they may well be under control by now.

How about Ubuntu?

I've downloaded FC, so I'm going to try that tonight. (I won't have internet again until later tomorrow.)

I guess I'll have to look up unbunu tomorrow.

Got to go now... but will be burning back up disks all night.

*edit* this was easier than I had imagined... I got my wireless setup in the blink of an eye.
Now that I've got web browsing down, its time to figure out the rest of this OS.

Linux has made huge strides in the last year or two. It's getting there.

Question: The second time I booted linux today it ran constantly at 90% CPU usage for 5-10 minutes. It didn't do that the first time I booted it. What was it doing? I couldn't find a way to see the processor usage of each task... so I had no idea what was hogging my resources.

Also, I know how to open terminal windows, but what if I want to unload the GUI and just work in text mode?

Thanks.

Well, you don't actually even have to unload the gui. Just use ALT-F1 thru ALT-F6 (sometimes more, sometimes less) to switch between sessions.

As far as unloading X itself, without restarting/rebooting/etc, that kind of depends on the window manager you're using.

You could edit the init file - don't remember which one offhand - to prevent X from loading in the first place, but that would of course require a reboot.

Well, you don't actually even have to unload the gui. Just use ALT-F1 thru ALT-F6 (sometimes more, sometimes less) to switch between sessions.

As far as unloading X itself, without restarting/rebooting/etc, that kind of depends on the window manager you're using.

You could edit the init file - don't remember which one offhand - to prevent X from loading in the first place, but that would of course require a reboot.

Gambit likes to repeat himself.

Heh. One of those "no response from the browser" situations...