Re: Of mice and men


A lot of distributions will automatically install a boot manager to help you
dual boot. Mandrake is traditionally ranked in the top few for ease of
install (along with Redhat's Anaconda? and Suse's Yast) so I'm not going to
suggest it's a poor choice at all....the new version is Mandriva - in
typical fashion renames itself for confusion

There are a number of pro's and con's to each distro however. The main
issue with getting a "freebie" version is just limited to the support. I
would look at what software you want to run and then do a quick search on
them to establish if there are any typical problems.

I for one, have had problems with certain aspects of both Fedora and with
Suse. I have Fedora now because it happed to install my copy of websphere
studio with less pain than anything else I've tried, though I regret this
decision as I definitely preferred the Suse maintenance. There is a
distribution that intrigues me - White Box (it was mentioned by another clc
user on another thread) -this is supposedly a "red hat" distribution without
the "red hat" proprietary stuff.

I guess my point is that you should look at what you need and then pick a
distro because my experience is that upgrading is just a pain. Mandriva
might work just fine for you or might not. As you already do your own
backup images you might want to look into something like Linsight which
installs "within" windows. Some versions also get much better support group
support. I haven't looked around much but my point is that the majority of
distro's really take care of you better than they used to. I remember
having to do recompilations of the kernel to get my cable modem to work....I
cannot even remember how to do that anymore and doubt I will ever need to.

Check out http://distrowatch.com/ there are literally hundreds to choose
from.....and COBOL is supported on every one of them I"m sure - I'll have to
check the faq :-)

JCE

"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3dt7q1F3k3fU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> That sounds like a really interesting arrangement, Donald.
>
> Would you happen to have a link where I can get Mandrake?
>
> Pete.
>
> Top POST no more below
>
> "Donald Tees" <donald_tees@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:Zh5ee.9698$3U.691966@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Pete Dashwood wrote:
>> >
>> > It's just too risky for me at the moment. On Friday I have a session
>> > scheduled with a local vendor to supply hardware to my spec. I'm
>> > looking
> at
>> > a notebook with 17in screen (built in video camera), P4 3+ GHz
> processor,
>> > 100GB HD (2 of these; one external for image copy), wireless and the
> works.
>> > I'll load XP Pro on it and MAY set up a dual boot partition with
>> > Linux.
> (I
>> > am also getting two other systems built for friends, so we should get a
>> > reasonable deal...) Until I have that lot configured and working, and
> have
>> > transferred everything from the existing machine and backed it all up
>> > to
> the
>> > external hard drive on the new machine, I won't be installing anything
> new,
>> > anywhere... :-)
>> >
>>
>> If you install XP first, then do a simple install of Mandriva (mandrake)
>> Linux, it wll set the machine up for dual boot automatically. The only
>> effect you should notice in XP is the disk will get a bit smaller due to
>> Linux setting up a couple partions. I expect that other distributions
>> will do the same, but have no personal experience with them.
>>
>> I have one system here that boots Linux, XPPro, Win98, & Win95. The only
>> thing I use the Linux partition for is to backup the other three. Since
>> Linux can see all three, but they cannot even see the Linbux partition,
>> it is a bullet-proof backup method (as long as the HD keeps working<G>).
>> It even backs up all the stuff Windows will *not* backup because of
>> files being open, and restores them flawlessly.
>>
>> Once you set up Linux, then you can use it for mail and web access, and
>> keep the mail settings in XP as they are ... funny but installing an
>> extra OS seems to be less risky than changing the existing system to me.
>> I've been installing Linux on my Win systems just for backup.
>>
>> Donald.
>>
>
>
>


.

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