Subj : LINUX the Cross Roads
To   : All
From : Spaceman Spiff
Date : Wed Jan 05 2005 08:08 pm

Well, it finally happened. I came across an extra machine for free, an old
Pentium II, and I figured this was an oppourtunity to see what the Buzz was all
about.

I went to www.linuxiso.org and downloaded the 3 Mandrake Linux Ver 10.1 CD ISOs
and burned them.

I wrote over the old WIndows2000Pro installation on the P2. The drive that was
in the machine was a real small one, 1.6 GIG, I couldn't load all the extra
server stuff, but I figured I would get a taste of LINUX.

So far, pretty cool. I need to figure out a few things, but I managed to be
able to surf the web, downloaded FireFox for Linux, works good....I think I
need to pick up a bigger drive, the machine seems a little slow, everytime I go
to run an application, I wait and the drive runs and runs.

I am not sure if it is the slowness of the machine or the fact that there is
such little free space on the Hard drive that machine is slowing because it is
doing a virtual memory thing on the hard drive?  Does Linux use a virtual
memory thing like Windows and the MAC OS?

Anyway...I guess I have a lot to learn, but it looks pretty cool and there are
lots of resources.

73 mark

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