From ruhtra@turing.toronto.edu Thu Apr 24 10:48:17 EDT 1997 Article: 4558 of ut.cdf.general Xref: utcsri ut.cdf.general:4558 Path: utcsri!turing.toronto.edu!ruhtra Newsgroups: ut.cdf.general From: ruhtra@turing.toronto.edu (Arthur Tateishi) Subject: Re: Linux Question - Visual C++ / NT deal X-Nntp-Posting-Host: oliver.turing.toronto.edu Message-ID: <1997Apr23.233054.7010@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu> Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto References: <1997Apr23.112351.9692@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu> Date: 24 Apr 97 03:30:55 GMT Lines: 92 In article <1997Apr23.112351.9692@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu>, David Neto wrote: >In article , >Craig Wilson wrote: >By far, OS/2 has the friendliest multiple boot system. It's been >a feature of OS/2 for at least 3 years. It doesn't trash the Linux >boot setup. (I use OS/2 and Linux.) > >> I am considering running NT with Linux as my *other* >>OS. Does anyone have any experience with connecting to via an ISP (ie >>full Internet access - not running slirp) to CDF and running Linux? > >I use PPP to connect to CSlab all the time. It's entirely painless. In fact, Douglas Chen appears to have a less-than-optimal PPP setup. I found that dynamic IP assignment makes the Linux PPP setup even easier (I use it with CSlab sometimes). It should be fairly painless. If you have difficulty, let us know. I and others feel that one way to repay the Linux community for such a great OS is to assist others to join. >>understand it takes some time to install and configure Linux correctly - >>is the pain worth it? > >I haven't installed or configured Linux recently. (I've organically grown >and grafted new parts onto it over the past 3 years.) >It certainly isn't as slick as MS or IBM or Apple installations, but >you can get all the information you need from the HOWTOs. It really >isn't that bad. Linux installation is astonishingly easy now. [soapbox on] I have long since recommended the scorched earth approach to Linux upgrades. That is, setup your Linux system in such a way that you can wipe out the OS partition and re-install a new version on top. How do you do this? Create at least three partitions for Linux (swap root(/) and /local). Install the OS on / and put personal stuff like your personal files on /local. When I want to upgrade, I copy /etc over to /local and do an install of the new version on / and fix up the new /etc. I have yet to hear anyone who can beat my approach (1-3hr). [soapbox off] >I've heard good things about the Red Hat distribution of Linux >(http://www.redhat.com/). They have an interesting software package >manager technology, RPM, and seem to be at the top of the Linux >market. Red Hat Linux 4.0, it says here, OS of the year by InfoWorld. >Hmm. >Any takers on this one? Arthur? Sure, I'll byte. I can personally recommend Red Hat now. I got a laptop at work(Toshiba Tecra740CDT w/ 80MB ram. Scary!) to get our product running on it w/ Linux. Anyway, I installed RedHat Linux 4.1 in about 13 minutes from their CD. Frightening. Another ~5-10 minutes to configure X and it took another 12 minutes for me to re-install/configure a previously compiled kernel and pcmcia ethernet drivers to access the network and nfs mount our network drives. The 12 minutes was a dare. I had a friend at work kibitzing and he challenged me to get the network running before lunch (in 20min). It will take you longer but the only confusing part about installing Red Hat 4.1 is the bewildering array of software you can choose to install. $45 at the bookstore for the box set (2 CDs, book, boot disks). If you're scared, I would spend the extra beer money and get it vs some reseller of red hat(~$20-30) where you have to make the disks, print out some install docs, figure out some quirks, etc. The install program in 4.1 is slick. About comparable to the old Win3.1 and OS/2 2.0 installs. Oh yeah. Red Hat supports fairly painless upgrades but it also works well with my blast-it-away approach. I haven't tried the upgrading feature. Don't worry, though. Linux runs so well that I haven't upgraded my home machine(Slackware96) since Feb96. >Now, is the pain, if there is any, worth it? YES! What pain? If your machine is really really new hardware I would ask about compatibility with Linux. It should be ok, though. arthur (Running Linux almost continuously(24hr) since June 1992. Yikes!) -- Choices don't scare me. However, a lack of choices does. Arthur Tateishi ruhtra@turing.utoronto.ca