Subj : LINUX the Cross Roads
To   : Spaceman Spiff
From : Richardw
Date : Thu Jan 06 2005 12:56 pm

  Re: LINUX the Cross Roads
  By: Spaceman Spiff to All on 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 
 > about.
 > 
 > I went to www.linuxiso.org and downloaded the 3 Mandrake Linux Ver 10.1 CD I
 > and burned them.
 > 
 > I wrote over the old WIndows2000Pro installation on the P2. The drive that w
 > 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
 > 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 
 > 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 a
 > lots of resources.

Welcome aboard.  I ran Mandrake at one time, I've since switched to SuSE
without regret.  I was thinking of playing with some of the more technical
distros like slackware, or gentoo... but I have so little time, and SuSE does
what I need very well. 

I think for technical uses, I'll just stick with FreeBSD.  

I'm attempting to build a multi-headed FreeBSD box for my living room... not
sure why... just weird I guess. :-)

.