Linux noob asking for help

[Master of Cards]

Okay I have an old computer that I want to test linux out on. Its an old computer, (1.1 ghz, 256 ram, 60 gig) I want to nuke the hard drive, before putting anything on the Computer. I'll sud divide the hard drive (need a program for that) and I'll dual boot to different linux distros.
Any good linux distros for newbies?
A distro so I can nuke the hard drive and partion it?

[Bounty]

A distro so I can nuke the hard drive and partion it?

Pretty much any LiveDistro comes with a partition manager. As for distros to try, I'm using Xubuntu which is quite nice.

[phongn]

Try playing with Xubuntu - it works well with older computers. You can boot it off the CD and play with it and then use a graphical installer (complete with partitioner) if you wish to install it on your machine.

[Bounty]

it works well with older computers

And it's nice to have an environment that's less hyperactive than KDE.

[Master of Cards]

Thanks for the tips, i'm getting Xubuntu 6.10. If anyone has other distros that could be installed later on the other partitions, feel free to list them.

[phongn]

Thanks for the tips, i'm getting Xubuntu 6.10. If anyone has other distros that could be installed later on the other partitions, feel free to list them.

I would strongly suggest learning just one distribution of Linux for now (and Xubuntu is a good one to learn). Multi-booting across distributions is not a trivial exercise. Also, most distributions these days come with GUIs that are fairly hungry for RAM and CPU time.

And it's nice to have an environment that's less hyperactive than KDE.

That's why I prefer GNOME

[Master of Cards]

Dual boot as in boot one at a time, unless you have to have dual boots running all oses on the box.

[Bounty]

Dual boot as in boot one at a time, unless you have to have dual boots running all oses on the box.

"Dual boot" as in picking one OS at boot with two or more installed on their own partition or hard drive. To do this you need to set up a bootloader like GRUB; K/X/ubuntu does this automatically if you have an earlier OS installed, but there's little reason to dualboot between two Linux distros if you just want to get to know the OS.

[Master of Cards]

Dual boot as in boot one at a time, unless you have to have dual boots running all oses on the box.

"Dual boot" as in picking one OS at boot with two or more installed on their own partition or hard drive. To do this you need to set up a bootloader like GRUB; K/X/ubuntu does this automatically if you have an earlier OS installed, but there's little reason to dualboot between two Linux distros if you just want to get to know the OS.

I want to do this for down the road, trying out something new without getting rid of a system i;m used to.

[Master of Cards]

I'm downgrading myself to a linux noob, how do you install something?

[Bounty]

I'm downgrading myself to a linux noob, how do you install something?

Depends on your distro. In Xubuntu, you can:

-go to Applications->System->Synaptic package manager and tick the software you want before hitting "Apply"
-use a self-installing .bin file, or a premade install script
-compile from source

What are you trying to install?

[Master of Cards]

I'm downgrading myself to a linux noob, how do you install something?

Depends on your distro. In Xubuntu, you can:

-go to Applications->System->Synaptic package manager and tick the software you want before hitting "Apply"
-use a self-installing .bin file, or a premade install script
-compile from source

What are you trying to install?

a game, its giving all type of file names, i'm assming a .gz is an install script?

[Bounty]

I'm downgrading myself to a linux noob, how do you install something?

Depends on your distro. In Xubuntu, you can:

-go to Applications->System->Synaptic package manager and tick the software you want before hitting "Apply"
-use a self-installing .bin file, or a premade install script
-compile from source

What are you trying to install?

a game, its giving all type of file names, i'm assming a .gz is an install script?

*.tar.gz is an archive file. You can extract it with Xarchiver.

[RThurmont]

I personally reccommend against dual booting multiple Linux distros on the same HD. While it is doable, for some really annoying reason, most Linux distros won't set it up for you automatically when installing, requiring manual configuration. It really irks me to say this, but its vastly easier to dual boot Windows and Linux than it is to dual-boot two different Linux distros.

If you have a faster computer availible, however, one really nice way of trying multiple distros is with VMWare Server or Qemu. You create virtual machines, and then install distros onto them. That's how I prefer to test out different distros (and operating systems, for that matter).

While the list of OSes I've used isn't as impressive as the one guy mentioned in the Win95 thread, I'd be really suprised if there were any other sdnetters using QNX.

[Bounty]

Give me 48 hours. A real-time kernel sounds..intriguing

[RThurmont]

It's fun to play with, if you, like me, enjoy operating systems as much as videogames (the true mark of an ubernerd).

My complete desktop OS collection includes several flavors of Linux, NetBSD, PC-BSD, Solaris, Mac slOwS X, Syllable, a few varieties of Windows, and trial versions of Novell Netware and QNX. OSes I'm eager to try include Plan 9/Inferno, OpenBSD, and AROS. I am a big fan of Haiku and have played with it, but I don't have it installed anywhere ATM.