If your bying new hardware you shouldnt need to set IRQ's, DMA's or ioports's. Most pci and agp cards self configure so unless you still have a isa card youll be fine. Debian's a good distro but Mandrake is your easy as hell to install if you want the easyer then windows 98 install path.
----- Original Message ----- From: B.E.D.Ellis-00@student.lboro.ac.uk Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 12:48:56 +0000 (GMT) To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [Alug] Re: Welcome to the "main" mailing list (Digest mode)
Quoting Paul paul.corner@tesco.net:
If you need any CDs of the various distros, you only have to ask - Most of us are only too willing to help out.
I'm happy to download any ISOs etc I need from the net, I'm not in a rush to do anything really. Thanks for the offer though.
Quoting Tristan Scott trs@scott998.freeserve.co.uk:
Im running Gentoo. this is a good one if you're already into linux
I'm not ^^
This is irrelevent for a newbie tho, i suggest using some distro that holds your hand... what language(s) do you write in? gentoo obviously has a good build environment, but i dont know about the big distros...
I think I'll stick with Debian unless someone has a good reason I shouldn't.
I'm a decent programmer when it comes to java, c, c++, c#, php, VB, JavaScript and most of their variations (such as ActionScript, VBScript, JSP, ASP, etc). I've messed around with Assembly, OpenGL, DirectX, the WinAPI and Sockets/Network programming but not done any major projects with them yet.
I'm absololutly useless when it comes to hardware though. Only recently I'm starting to come to grips with everything since I'm planning on buying a new computer so been reading up on all the latest tech stuff. I think I'll have the most trouble during installation when it asks for my hardware settings (like an Interupts/DMA/etc). As for figuring out how to install various packages, thats where I ring up a few friends and post to this list.
Cheers for the feedback, Ben "Losing broadband for a whole 2 weeks, how am I gonna survive?!?!?"Ellis
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On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 21:41:18 +0800 "NuTTeR -- Not Entered --" uknutter@graffiti.net wrote:
If your bying new hardware you shouldnt need to set IRQ's, DMA's or ioports's. Most pci and agp cards self configure so unless you still have a isa card youll be fine. Debian's a good distro but Mandrake is your easy as hell to install if you want the easyer then windows 98 install path.
I would be very surprised if a new PC contained any ISA cards so IRQs etc probably won't be a problem.
Unless things have changed since I installed it Debian woody doesn't do graphics chip detection when setting up XFree86 so it will be useful to know what chipset your graphics card uses and also what the maximum permitted H & V sync rates are for the monitor you are using.
If you want to re-compile your kernel to make it leaner then you will also want to know which motherboard chipset you have.
Steve.
On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 12:42:34AM +0000, Steve Fosdick wrote:
On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 21:41:18 +0800 "NuTTeR -- Not Entered --" uknutter@graffiti.net wrote:
If your bying new hardware you shouldnt need to set IRQ's, DMA's or ioports's. Most pci and agp cards self configure so unless you still have a isa card youll be fine. Debian's a good distro but Mandrake is your easy as hell to install if you want the easyer then windows 98 install path.
I would be very surprised if a new PC contained any ISA cards so IRQs etc probably won't be a problem.
many ISA cards are P'n'P compatible anyhow so most don't cause any problems, the last time I had "fun" with ISA on new hardware was a modem about 4 years ago.
Unless things have changed since I installed it Debian woody doesn't do graphics chip detection when setting up XFree86 so it will be useful to know what chipset your graphics card uses and also what the maximum permitted H & V sync rates are for the monitor you are using.
As I have said elsewhere lspci can help you identify your gfx chipset if you are not sure what it is (and most cards should work with vga I think). To get the refresh rates for your monitor you can install the package read-edid and then use the command get-edid | parse-edid to see what your monitor thinks its specifactions are (should work on most recent monitors).
If you want to re-compile your kernel to make it leaner then you will also want to know which motherboard chipset you have.
lspci is your friend again here too :)
Adam
Steve Fosdick fozzy@pelvoux.demon.co.uk wrote:
Unless things have changed since I installed it Debian woody doesn't do graphics chip detection when setting up XFree86 so it will be useful to
It can, but I can't remember the correct way to do it. Shows how often you install Debian freshly! Install once, upgrade forever?
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Adam Bower -
MJ Ray -
NuTTeR -- Not Entered -- -
Steve Fosdick