*nix @ Last

[Cypher]

Well I got my CDR. So far I got Drake and BSD up and going. I also got Debian,Gentoo and Slack burned but not installed yet. I'll try them all after I get used to BSD (to beat my ass), and Drake (to tell me it's gonna get better). Now I need a printer to copy the install docs.
I'm running under windowmaker and kde for now.
Heres my first set of questions:
1-what do I open docs up in?
2-How do I install these nvidia drivers? In drake for starters.(if I could have figured out 1, 2 would'nt be an issue.
So far I love it. I always knew I would.

[SavageHrt]

Originally posted by cyPHer_138
Well I got my CDR. So far I got Drake and BSD up and going. I also got Debian,Gentoo and Slack burned but not installed yet. I'll try them all after I get used to BSD (to beat my ass), and Drake (to tell me it's gonna get better). Now I need a printer to copy the install docs.
I'm running under windowmaker and kde for now.
Heres my first set of questions:
1-what do I open docs up in?
2-How do I install these nvidia drivers? In drake for starters.(if I could have figured out 1, 2 would'nt be an issue.
So far I love it. I always knew I would.

You should be able to open your docs in any wordprocessing program. The page format may be a bit off, but you should be able to read it. Another alternative would be to install the stuff from the shell and not X-windows. While in the shell, press ALT-2, ALT-3, etc.... and you can log in to multiple shells. From there you can open up the INSTALL file in vi or whatever text-based text editor you want. then perform all the install command from the other shells. If you don't know how to use any of the text-based text editors you can type this commnd cat <filename> | less then you can scroll up and down with the arrow keys and type 'q' to exit. If you have any more questions let me or anyone else for that matter know.

Sav

[cyberskye]

cat <filename> | less

I've always thought that less is more than more iself


Curious, Cypher - what is the goal of installing these different flavors? Don't get me wrong - I think experimentation is necessary for learning. Doing all of those at once may get confusing/frustrating.

Some OS's and even distro's within an OS are betters suited to certain tasks. You will certainly find this true among the BSD family: OpenBSD stresses security over features (don't think it even supports SMP yet), freebsd went for pure speed, netbsd wants to run on any and all hardware...each is very similar to the admin, however.


If I were to set up a database or local file server I would go with a linux variant. More feature-rich (which, unfortunately can mean less secure). If I want to run an internet server I would choose bsd (more utilitarian, much more secure default install than some other OS's) or a VERY sparse linux install.

I point all this out as learning the specifics of several OS's at once can be confusing. They all have the same type of config files (more or less) but in different locations and sometimes different formats). I had to learn Solaris and IBM/AIX at the same time (never having touches unix before) and that reallly caused some headaches for me. I kept getting hung up on the differences between the two...intimidating to say the least.

[Cypher]

I only installed Mandrake9 and FreeBSD 4.7 to learn *nix. I burned Gentoo, Debian, Slackware because they caught my attention.
My reasoning:
-Drake seems to be a great newbie distro to help ease my transition from everyday Win usage, yet maintain functionality.
-Bsd seems closer to Unix and requires you to learn in order to use it (as does certain Linux flavours) ; thus teaching you so much in return about the relationship between software & hardware. Besides I've always had an affinity for Penguins and demons.
My vision for my box:
Drive 1 (120G)
-5G Win98 SE- (For gaming).
-20G XP- (To stay current with M$/work stuff).
-20G Mandrake 9.0- (Everyday use).
-20G FreeBSD-(For experience and who knows what).
-The rest of the drive is for storage, backups & some games.
Drive 2 (20G)
-Static swaps for Win- (2 1G slices).
-Games- (The rest).

I want to use Windows for what its currently best for...Games. If I had to knock 1 OS off drive 1 it would probably be XP.
I figure if I can config BSD, Debian or the other more advanced distros should be "less diffacult".

Thank you both both for the help though. I was begining to feel awfully lonely since I'm the only *nix user I currently know personaly.
I'll repost my driver results Savage.

[Stef]

Originally posted by cyberskye
I've always thought that less is more than more iself

You could also do this:

more < filename or even less < filename

Those nvidia drivers should be pre-compiled on Mandrake and even FreeBSD. You just need to load them. I could be wrong though.

Stef

[SavageHrt]

Originally posted by Stef
You could also do this:

more < filename or even less < filename

See, we all learn something new. Thanks for the tip Stef

[cyberskye]

You can also just more filename. redirection isn't needed.

Skye

[Stef]

Yeah, I know. It's an old habit that's I learn't it in MS-DOS. Way back when I was 12

Stef

[Cypher]

Well 98 and XP on the same hdd was a feat in and of itself(unworthy of the effort.) It seemed a good idea because I'm using M$ for running games more or less. Long story short, I had to reformat after it was all said and done. I have no problem struggling with *nix because its worth it. But at this point I'm too fed up with windows to tollerate any B.S. from it at all.
In the end FU*@ 98 once you run XP/2K game wise.

[neo960]

I have been a user of vi for 12 years and I absolutely love it! As a C/C++/Perl/Java programmer, I find my programming tasks easy while using vi.

The problem is that vi is not easy for newbies (it took me a year to completely master it). For newbies I would suggest gVim, available as freeware.
http://www.vim.org/download.php
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Vim-HOWTO.html

I would like to suggest Kernighan & Pike's excellent book on Unix : The Unix programming enviroment. It is tough to read, but if you master it, you will become an advanced user. Then you can progress to W Richard Stevens' books to become a Unix guru (like me )

[Cypher]

Thanx I'll check it out.