I finally have a real operating system!!!
On the night of Tuesday, December 30, 1997, Mark Santos successfully installed Red Hat Linux 5.0. Yes, it was a no brainer, but that was how Mark was [finally] able to get Linux installed (see note below). He is now very happy with his triple-boot configuration (Win95, WinNT, RHL). He would like to thank Cheapbytes for his Red Hat Linux 5.0 CD and Gilles Vollant software for the BootPart program. He would like to send FDISK and the lack of a definitive source of partitioning information to hell.
Now that you've installed Linux, what are you going to do now, Mark?
I'm going to learn how to use it (those 3 books I got for Christmas should help). I'm also going to write a FAQ on partitioning in an effort to prevent suicides due to the evil FDISK tool.
Sounds great. Anything else?
Yes, I'm going to bed. Good night.
Note: My main problems with installing Linux were with my X configuration, because I practically have no idea what kind of video card or monitor I have, and my partitioning, because, despite a continual search, I was unable to find a definitive source on partitioning slash multi-boot configurations. With a lot of trial and error, I was able to get both right. Getting Red Hat 5.0 was only good for finding out which X-Server I needed to install (S3V) and the preconfigured window managers. I still had to run xf86config, and by about the sixth or seventh try I was able to get all the settings right since the Red Hat xprobe didn't configure X properly. I also did my partitioning with cfdisk - the fdisk that comes with Red Hat is even more confusing. I didn't try out Disk Druid. More later as I write, Making the transition to Linux.
Caldera's DR-OpenDOS 7.02 has just been released. This is fully compatible DOS people, and Caldera's giving it out for free! It supports Windows 3.1x and co-exists with Win95 and other operating systems. It's Year 2000 compliant, but that's the least of it. This is a pre-emptive multi-tasking DOS with DPMI slash DPMS - yes, virtual memory! It may sound too good to be true, but it is. Go see for yourself! DOS is not dead!!! Heck, I'm thinking of replacing Win95 with OpenDOS and Win 3.1 - it would certainly be a far more resource efficient combination, not to mention less crash-prone (It Has To BeTM).
Copyright © 1997 Mark Santos. All rights reserved.