[ltp] New...

[Steven Crane]

...I am wondering if the responses to Steve's questions have overlooked two of
his original parameters.  First he is new to Linux and second he wants to
limit the space available to Linux to about 3 Gb of the 6.4 Gb on his hard
drive...

As mentioned, I have been through the RH 6.1 install on a very old PC. One which was 
assembled form spare parts and contained no "identifiably branded" components at all. 
I got it to work after a fashion in only a few hours and it took up only a few hundred 
megs of drive space.

My initial reservation regarding newer versions is that the "suggested minimum" amount 
of HD space has shot up rather a lot. I'm pretty sure that it can be made to fit, but if RH 
6.1 can reasonably be relied on to work without blowing anything up, then it'll do as a 
place to start. There seems to be a good amount of archive material on the web refering 
to the installation of RH 6.x on a 600e, I will probably run with this old "distro" anyway. I 
know it will fit and, according to IBM, it should idenitfy all but the necessary sound 
settings straight from the box.

However, based on the comments received, what I will be doing is installing only with a 
view to replacing it completely with an up to date distribution. Perhaps as soon as a 
couple of weeks from now. Mandrake 8.2 looks favourite at the moment. I don't plan to 
be doing anything that I'll expect to keep just yet and will be more than happy if RH 
allows me to pick up the basics of the interface... well, that and playing "Robots".



...An alternative that might be considered is adding more disk space. Since
Steve appears to archiving "some important files," he could consider a zip
drive...

Nope. The way it is, is the way it has to be. At least temporarily. Longer term... well, 
out with the Windows in with the Linux. 

I have to admit I'm a little surprised by the number of people who seem to manage a 
completely Windows free existence. Regardless of how I feel about it, work means I'm 
stuck with it... probably for a very long time to come.

As things stand, Win98 looks like it will do the necessary in as little as 1.5GB, so 
potentially I can allocate almost 5GB to Linux. Unfortunately, it's going to be a while 
before I'm confident enough to allocate that kind of harddrive division. Not to mention 
the fact that I would be VERY suspicious of any reccomendation that required that 
amount of space. Across half a dozen PC's and countless upgrades, I've only once 
seen Windows get above 4GB and I'm pretty sure that the majority of that was taken up 
by a single Golf game.

I'm hearing rumours that a 600e will accommodate a much bigger hard-drive than the 
6.4GB on it came with... :-)

I've already ordered in a couple of new Memory chips to push it up to 288MB. I like the 
sound of a 544MB system, but the 256MB chips don't look like very good value (more 
than 3 times the cost of 128s), I haven't had any definite indication that they'll work 
even if I were prepared to pay for them and, however desirable, even the latest 
distrbutions don't "require" that amount of memory.

---Steven




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