Re: Tiresome not-even-newbie question

["SN_Diamond" <Norman.Diamond@example.com>]

Peter despammed:


> One reason for getting this Toshiba is that I've outgrown the hard
> drive capacity (1.3 GB or so) of *this* laptop, a Fujitsu FMV-5133NU6/W
> (Pentium 133, 32MB RAM). As the Fujitsu isn't mine, I'm not authorized
> to open it up and change the hard drive -- but I can do absolutely
> anything I want with software, e.g. nuking Windows and putting Linux in
> its place.

That sounds like a good idea.  I once put RH 6.0 US on a laptop with similar
capabilities.  That was enough for me to guess that Linux was still in the
experimental stage.  Later I learned that Red Hat is famous for releasing
n.1 and n.2 very quickly after n.0, i.e. the failures of an n.0 don't say
anything about Linux.  Later I learned that Red Hat is famous in other ways
too, and the failures of a Red Hat n.m don't say anything about Linux.  But
the fact remains that a working installation is harder than a non-working
installation.

> I got Red Hat because it's well known and . . . yes, I suppose I was
> amused by the logo. I got 7.0 because I thought it would have better
> support than 6.2 for USB, PCMCIA, etc.  But it requires 2.5 GB of hard
> drive space,

I do think that 7.0 needs more disk space than 6.0 (don't know about 6.2).
But I think you don't need 2.5 GB to do a minimal installation and practice
using it.  If you want to use it for real work you'll need 10 GB, but you're
not starting out at that level.  Try it on your old laptop first.

Besides, someday you're going to delete Linux from your old laptop and
you'll reinstall an OS that's known for far worse failings, right?  So what
does it matter if several of your Linux efforts fail during the meantime?
That machine is well suited for experimentation now.

Yours sincerely,
Norman Diamond