Having played around briefly with several linux OS's and liking what I have found I have chosen to play with Mandriva for a while .
As I am running a AMD 64 bit cpu I wanted to make full use of its talents . After all I did pay good money for it so it seems a waste not to use it to its full capability .Looking around for a 64 bit os narrowed the field quite a lot . Windows wanted bagfulls of loot for their offerings XP and Vista . I may have been tempted by 64 bit XP but there was no way I would pay Microsoft for Vista 64 bit . Another of putting point about going the Microsoft route is that to make use of a 64 bit os I would need to buy 64 bit software , as I have not won the lottery lately I decided to pass up the opportunity to contribute to Bill's pension fund Looking at the linux offerings I came across the Mandriva Free Spring 2008 64 Bit version .This distribution had a few decent write ups and some good walkthroughs on some of its older distros which I hoped would be of help to me as I tried out the latest version of Mandriva .
One thing to remember about the following walkthroughs is that I have only been playing linux for 3 months or so and had never typed any commands in DOS or a Konsole befor I started to play . So this will be a little bit like the blind leading the blind especially if you are a newbie like me to linux playing .

So with the intro out of the way I'll take you on your first step in this entertaining journey of enlightenment .

I downloaded my dvd .iso by way of a bit torrent , I'm a fan of bit torrenting , its rooted in me hippy past I think this idea of openly sharing ideas and information and such like . At 349K it is a smallish download and its dated the 09-05-2008 so it is pretty new and up to date .

http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/

Burn the .iso with the appropriate program and you are ready to rock and roll .

As this is an ongoing thread for a while I will be adding some mini walkthroughs on stuff that I think may be of interest to newbies like myself . See below for easy access to them .
Enjoy.


Main Install ------- Post 2 Page 1
First Up-date -- --- Post 8 Page 1
GKrellm -- -------- Post 12 Page 2
Boinc install -- --- Post 13 Page 2 In my opinion a must have for any pc user.
KAlarm ------------ Post 15 Page 2
ATI Drivers ------ Post 23 Page 3
Word Viewer ---- Post 25 Page 3 --- Microsoft Office Word 2003 Viewer and more.
Flash Player ------ Post 26 Page 3 ---- Getting flash to work.
KODO ----------- Post 27 Page 3
Beginers manual - Post 29 Page 3 --- Excelent starting place for newbies, wish I had read it weeks ago

I like the options given here at the first screen you see .




You can guess which option I went for .




You then go to the serious stuff . Partitioning !!

You can let the system do its stuff automaticaly ot take any of the options given . I went for the custom option . Here is a handy tip , I had already formated with Acronis whilest in Windows XP , this was very fast and easy to do . I am dual booting on my pc so this was an option for me . Formating from the Mandriva CD takes quite a while so have a good supply of tea and buiscuits handy if you follow this route . Althougfh I have formated the drive beforhand I still need to run through this part of the program so that it will set my "MOUNT" points .




I set my first partition at 15 Gb , This will hold the main OS . I may have made this too large , 10 GB would probably have been plenty big enough .




I could swear blind that I made this partition 23 GB This is my " home " partition , where I will keep my files and also I need some space here to do stuff with .avi files etc etc .

I made the disk 15 GB , 23 GB and 2 GB for the Swap space . Seems like computers are sentient beings after all and can do as they please as you can see by the results shown . Oh well I'm not complaining , just

I have been reading up on Swap Spaces and it looks as though I do not need a Swap Space at all as I have 4 GB of memory in my system . I put it in as an example and I can always integrate it into my /home partition at a later date .

I did some further reading on Swap Spaces . This is from the Red Hat site , Mandriva originally evolved from Red Hat.

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/...-swapspace.html

Here is a detailed article on swap space.

http://www.xenotime.net/linux/doc/swap-mini-howto.txt

From what I can gather if you are running with more than 2 Gb of Ram then a swap space is not really needed .






This is the sort of screen you see next . This is from a previous install so the drive numbers will not make any sense for this current install . I put it in as an example only .
The previous screens were just letting you see how your choices would look on the hard drive . The screen above is where you actually tell the programe to do it's job . As I had already formated my drive I left the boxes unticked . If you tick the boxes even if you have formated the drive beforehand the program will format again , and it is a fairly slow process . ( thats an old picture so ignore the drive numbers shown)




Your next step is to decide whether to install the entire contents of the CD or just to do a simple install . Installing the whole CD will take up some space on the drive but will make all the content easily available . I do not know if this will have any impact on the speed at which the os runs . I chose to not install the CD . This means that when I want to run some of the programs . I will have to put the CD in a drive and install some components from it to the hard disk . I am hoping this will keep my drive cluter and bloat free and run a little sweeter .




I have just realised that I have been talking about a CD for the install when I should have been talking about a DVD for the install . At this screen if you are like me installing from a DVD then your choice is " NONE " . Some distros come on several CD's or are installed via network which is why you have a choice here .




I like the KDE look so I have stuck with it here .





Finaly we get to some serious stuff . The install has started .

Here's a little something to keep you busy:

http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfe...2008-spring-kde

Thanks Urmas , I have seen that walkthrough before and it is very good . However it is for a 32 bit OS and also it is not the FREE version , as in it contains some stuff that has DRM restrictions in some countries , I think I got that right . Still it has some good stuff in it .

Here is a link to the same persons walkthrough for the 32 Bit Mandriva Free 2008 Spring version . Once again a very good guide .

http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfe...mandriva_2008.0

Oops... sorry... THAT'S what I meant to post. Two brain calls and all that.

As for 64 Bit support, you can't beat Mandy.

Thats ok , folks now have several good quality links to slightly different versions of the same distro .

Ok . Enough chit chat only 17 mins to go and I can play with me new toy .




Twilight Zone time again , make that 25 minutes . I knew I should never have clicked on that " DETAILS " button .




It is a good job I fueled up with tea toast and home made jam . As we are now at that awfully hard part of OS installs , the think up yet another password hurdle . More tea and toast before I can face this I think .




You have several choices here . I think that the best option for most users is the one I have shown . This is the option advised by the Acronis site whe using their OS Selector program so thats why I'm sticking with it .




This is a lot easier than some setups and very user friendly .




Here you have the oportunity to customise your install . Clicking on the boxes on the right hand side will bring up windows where you can select the options you prefer .
From the Howtoforge link I gave earlier I noticed that the " SECURITY " section is set to HIGH as standard . This they recomend lowering to STANDARD for most users .
Once you are happy with your settings , move on .



Here we have a missing screenshot . Use your imagination .
This will ask you if you want to update your sytem . If you choose to do so you will need more than tea and toast as it will take a longish amount of time . It is best to say NO here and update later on from your desktop .






Open the champagne and fly the flag . You now have a new toy to play with .

What a hero .



Take out the DVD and re-boot the pc .





Enter your name and password click " ENTER " and you will have arrived in.........





Your new luverly home .

Enjoy .

So you have had a little play around . Found a pretty picture for your desktop . Now its back to serious stuff .




Concentrate on where we are going . Yes I know its quite a nice picture .



Remember them pesky passwords . You can remember them ? Can't you ?
Here you need the "ROOT" pasword .




See the highlighted in blue option , thats where we are going .




Polite and clear . Click "YES".



This is what you have onboard at the moment . But we can do better than that . Oh yes , much better .
Click on the "ADD" button on the right hand side .




Go for the full monty here.




Polite and clear again .




Take the mirror that is best for you .




You get a shed load of sites here . Some are just for brave experts . Some are redundant .
I unchecked the CD-ROM for safety as this is new territory for me and it seemed like a good thing to do at the time . You can get rid of them by highlighting each in turn and clicking on "REMOVE".
Look at the first "MAIN UPDATES 2008.1.1" thats the third one down , go to the ninth entry down and you will find "MAIN UPDATES 2008.1.6" . I'm sure that you can work out which one to REMOVE . Keep the highest numbered entry for each of the different sources . Also get rid of all entries that have "TESTING" anywhere in the title , these are for our brave and experienced pioneering friends without whos efforts this wonderful free os would not exist .
A five minute silence for all the folks sent mad by testing or a $10 Pay-pal contribution to the cause might be appropriate here .





If your screen looks like this you can click on "OK" . If you haven't found the pretty wallpaper yet do not panic , I was talking about the windowed section of the screen .


Halfway there folks but at least when you do update all of the latest stuff will be at your disposal . See there is method at work here , honest .

Thanks for showing us your experience there AB, interesting stuff.

I first tried installing a Linux Distro back in '99, it was a free Red Hat CD with a magazine, never did get it to work.

A year or two later, Mandrake was the very first Linux Distro I ever got to boot straight into a GUI (without having to use 'startx').

Mucks sent me the CD's for that one cos at the time he had Broadband and I was still on dial up.

But I managed to bork it within 3 days

I've dabbled with several Linux distros but I still don't know Jack, I really don't. Konsole commands leave me cold, although oddly enough I managed DOS quite Ok.

I am really fond of PC Linux OS 2007 and I like Suse, although I'd like Suse a whole lot better if they included all the media Codecs instead of making us download and install them all seperately.

I don't like Ubuntu much, maybe it's just me.

And one last thing.

If you're able to (Irfanview or The Gimp) would you please size all posted pix to 800 pixels wide.

Your pix are a tad on the large side which not only makes them hard to view (have to scroll side to side) but it also takes forever for them to load for dial-up forum members.

Thank you

If you have got this far without seeing any ghosts or cats you are very lucky

No time for tea and toast . Not just yet anyway .



See the blue highlight . You guessed it , time to update .




Nice and clear and still polite .




This being your first time it has this extra step in the process . Click "UPDATE" .





Rpmdrake is the tool that handles your updates so it updates itself first . On an ordinary update this step will not occur .
Click "YES" and let it do its stuff .




You should get to here . You know what to do here .





If by some chance all boxes are not ticked , click "SELECT ALL" and then "UPDATE". Feeling as though your blood sugar levels are running low ? Fear not tea and toast and jam are just a click away .




If you do not have the strength to click "YES" here . Panic .

Make tea and toast with lashings of jam . Coffee is a good alternative choice .




Finally the last screen . Time to "QUIT" An mebees some more tea and toast with honey , perhaps . Well you do deserve a treat after all that hard work .

So thats this little adventure over with folks . You now have an upto date state of the art FREE OS up and running on your pc and loads of loot still in your pocket .
Will it be as good as Windows ? The coming weeks will tell . However I am not looking to compare like to like here as that would not be fair to either side . I am looking to see if this free offering will do everything I need and end up as my main os .
As far as installs go I did not find a great deal of difference between Mandriva and Windows XP . I quite liked the look of the linux but XP installs are ok too . Maybe the XP install brags a little too much about its ability's , understandable as it is an american product . Whilst I did not time the install I think that the Mandriva install is quicker to get to a fully updated state , maybe about 25% quicker .
One last question remains to be answered . Have I got time and room for more tea and toast ? Hmmm it is 01.00 am after all . Now it will take three minutes for the kettle to boil and four minutes ...................................................................................................................................................................