On Mon, 2003-09-01 at 06:41, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Linux *can* be free as in beer. Go to www.debian.org, and from there click on
I was told that LINUX is amust and free but how do I get it? My computer knowledge though growing daily is limited help me please....
"installation manual", on the lefthand side. That isn't a bad choice, depending
on your needs. If you need it to be cheap, and have the time to spend to learn it,
then that's the best method. Understand, though, that you probably will also
find that you need to sign up for the debian-user mailing list, sooner or later.
Essentially, you'll have to read the installation manual once, sortof understanding it.
Then, you'll have to go through it step by step, installing it onto your computer. If you want a dual-boot, single HDD computer (Windows + Linux), then you'll
need to understand safely repartitioning your HDD, as well. If you want only
one OS per HDD, though, then that becomes a lot easier. You then will download the
floppy disk images, and use rawrite3 to write them to floppies. Then you will
write down all your system information and ISP information (IP addresses, gateways,
and such) that you can get from the preexisting system, or from the user manuals
you have. Finally, you will use the boot floppies to start up Linux for the first time.
Keep those floppies; don't overwrite them, because you're going to discover you
want it different after a week, and you'll reinstall Linux, doing a better job. Then, about a month later, you're going to change your mind again. That all
isn't bad -- practice makes perfect, as they say, and you'll really learn your
system much better that way. And all along the way, you'll search for answers
using Google, you'll ask questions on the mailing lists as politely as you can,
describing everything you've tried so far, and you'll duck whatever flames do
come your way, because really the flames are undeserved if you're being polite
and trying to get what info you can from google. You'll also get better at using
Google, as people say "well, I typed yada yada ya into Google, and got
this... ", and you try the Google search as they said.
Anyhow, that's how I learned. I'm not *great*, but I'm pretty good. I've installed an
Appletalk network server, an Apache webserver, a mySQL database server, the KOHA
library system, KDE, X, and whatnot, mostly with just the mailing lists and Google
for help. It's not too bad.
The alternative is to buy the CDs, as valisk says, but you'll still need to figure out
how to install it (about as complicated as a Win98 install) and use it (sometimes
a tad more difficult, often not).
- Mike
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