Versions of Linux. Slackware vs Red Hat vs ?

[Bob Reardon]

I am considering taking the plunge into Linux. What would be the best version to use as I learn Linux?
Thanks in advance
-Bob

[Greg Harris]

i just started with Linux last year. i chose Redhat 7.0 and i think it is fairly simple for a beginner.
Redhat just came out with 7.1 that uses the new Linux 2.4 kernel. it also provides drivers for USB devices and more printers than the 7.0 version i have.
check out the Linux website for details

[Bob Reardon]

Thanks Greg. What would be considered a good minimum system to start using Linux? Processor, HD space, RAM, etc?

[Greg Harris]

i have a friend that built a Linux box using an old ($35) piece of $%&* 486 processor with 16M Ram... he uses it to run simulations in our Operating System class at school and says he has no problems. he also uses it as a print server for his other 2 Windows systems.
i, on the other hand, partitioned my 850Mhz AMD Athlon and put Linux on one of the partitions. i also put it on a partition on my Sony VAIO laptop (PII 366, 64M Ram) and it runs fine... but i do not use the GUI on that one because of battery useage.
the beauty of Linux (besides stability and its nominal cost) is the fact that you do not need expensive hardware to run it. spend what you can, but you do not have to go overboard to have a good system. i recommend at least a PII or better because you will wish you had it later down the road.
so, in my opinion:
PII (or equivalent)
366 (or better)
64M Ram (i have 384)
5G hdd (i have 10G on my partition)
[This message has been edited by Greg Harris (edited May 04, 2001).]

[Josephine Liang]

When I was tring to use Disk Druid to partition my hard drive on my vaio pcg-z505d, I got the following error:
an error occured reading the partition table for the block device hdc. The error was : input/output error
With fdisk, I find:
/dev/hdc -model MEMORYSTICK 4M 8K
Can any body help on what should I do about this?

[Greg Harris]

my vaio pcg-f350 had a 4 gig and a 2 gig partition when i bought it, so i just formatted the 2 gig partition and then installed Redhat. when i built my desktop machine i started from scratch, so i just partitioned it with the tool included with windows 2000.
i have not tried disk druid yet, but it sounds like it is finding your "memorystick" card. do you have a memorystick adapter / reader in your vaio? if so, you might need to take it out when running disk druid. i guess the memory stick shows up as another hdd, but disk druid does not recognize the format or something.
if you do have the memorystick adapter, you can probably leave it attached, just take the card out... but i would take the adapter out just to be sure.
i could be completely wrong here, but you never know until you try.