Re: Xy4 - OS options

[Paul Lagasse pglagasse@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia, I pretty much agree with Rafe. I think any experienced
computer user can use an installed Linux system with a graphical desktop
pretty much from the get-go. The latest Ubuntu desktop, Unity, is a
little trickier, but installing the last long-term support version (LTS)
of Ubuntu or installing one of its derivatives that doesn't use the
Unity desktop (Lubuntu, Mint, or PinguyOS) avoids that. And desktop
aside, if you want to try out Ubuntu or one of its derivatives, I'd
suggest trying the LTS-based version (Ubuntu 10.04 or Mint 9) and
installing that one. The LTS releases tend to have the fewest issues,
are supported the longest, and consolidate much of the development that
has gone on in the prior releases.

More specifically, re what Rafe wrote:
>  I will speak of Ubuntu since that's the distro I have the most
> experience with -- Paul is using Linux Mint, which is also
> Debian-based, and has a great deal to recommend it as well -- but
> Ubuntu probably has the broadest user base these days, and, I think
> Paul would agree, probably the easiest to find support for online.
I use Ubuntu releases 10.04, 10.10, and 11.04 and Mint releases 10 and
11 as well as Mint Debian pretty much interchangeably. I don't recommend
installing Ubuntu 11.04 or Mint 11, nor (for a beginner) Mint Debian.
One difference between Mint and Ubuntu that might be of interest is that
Thunderbird is Mint's default email program; Ubuntu uses, at present,
Evolution, though Thunderbird can be easily installed. Most Mint and
Ubuntu support is interchangeable, so if you have a Mint question, and
can't find help at Mint sites, looking at the Ubuntu forums may be
helpful. There's certainly much more Ubuntu info. If you try out one
Debian-based system, such as Ubuntu, and move to another, much of the
what you've learned transfers very readily.
> 1) Consider using an old machine you don't use much anymore, or
> getting a little netbook, and installing Linux onto that. (Apparently
> Asus is about to start selling netbooks with Ubuntu pre-installed.)
> After you play around with it for a few months, you'll have an idea
> how to optimally get it running on your main machine.  It's pretty
> exciting to be able to download an ISO image in an hour or so, burn it
> to a DVD, and start using it.
Alternatively, before installing at all, consider simply booting the CD.
Play around with it and see if you have questions or issues. If you have
a notebook, this is a good way to find out if it will recognize your
wifi card. If you want to try one of the distributions further, consider
creating or acquiring a thumbdrive installation. It's pretty easy to
create these, and it's also relatively cheap to buy a preinstalled
thumbdrive. This approach avoids installing the distro and partitioning
your hard drive, while also letting you give the distro a fuller
test-drive than you can with a CD.
If you can't easily download and burn and ISO, I'd be happy to send you
disk or two.
> 2) Linux distros' installation routines are pretty sophisticated now,
> -- they are cagey and in my experience if you just click on "Proceed"
> things will work -- but if you're installing over Windows, you
> certainly should first back everything up, and then research how
> things will work. Ubuntu's partition manager will offer a suggestion,
> which in most cases is sound, but these are the very circumstances
> that demand you know how Linux is seeing the partitions on your disk.
The one thing I would recommend you do, as a first time installer, is to
install the Linux bootloader to the partition you install Linux on,
rather than the master boot record. (Installing to the MBR is the
default setup.) If you don't already have a bootloader that will allow
you to select between Windows and Linux, consider installing EasyBCD
afterward in Windows so that you can access Linux. I think that doing
this allows you to remove Linux and its bootloader from your system more
easily if disenchantment or worse sets in.
> 3) If you're going dual-boot Windows and share a partition, there are
> considerations. Study up on these, online. It is possible to
> configure a partition for Windows-based Xywrite and Linux-based
> XyWrite to share, however it's my opinion that if most of your usage
> ends up to be Linux, you'd probably end up wanting to keep those files
> separate, just because the permissions issues on both OSes can get
> complicated.
I think that if you format a shared data partition as fat32 you should
be OK. Linux will let you create quite large fat32 partitions during
installation; you just can't use a fat32 partition for your system
files. I don't know, because I have no experience with it, if there are
issues with running DOS executables located on a fat32 partition.
> 4) Don't forget to find keystop.sys and download it and install it
> into your config.sys -- this will prevent ctrl-c from shutting down
> your DOS session.
"Shutting down" is Rafe's polite term for closing without warning and
with loss of unsaved data. And if your quit key-combo in XyWrite is
alt-f4, you should change the Linux usage for alt-f4 (which is quit in
Linux as well). Unless you issue that combo in a fullscreen session, the
Linux version will take precedence over the XyWrite version, and if you
have Xy4's alt-f4 set to run U2's finito, it will not be run and your
Xy4 session will close immediately, a la ctrl-c. Linux has no awareness
of the fact that there are unsaved files in a Xy4/Dosemu session.
Dosemu isn't DOS; there are some little quirks, and not all of U2 can be
run. Not all your existing batch files may run. If you do decide to try
things out, I have lots of notes, which I'd be happy to clean up, make
clearer, and share with you.

Paul Lagasse