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Linux - NiteFox - 12-14-2006
Okay, so my main project during the Christmas holiday (Uh, other than the essay I have to write on mobile computing) is to set up a Linux distribution on my box. Ideally, my main project during the Christmas holiday is to set up a Linux distribution on this box without completely screwing it up completely.
I'll be dual-booting 'tween XP Pro and Fedora Core 6 Zod, since it's the same distribution we use in university. Space isn't an issue, since Linux will be installed on a partition of my old 120GB IDE hard drive that's currently being occupied with my music collection; naturally, I plan on partitioning this drive off to install Linux on it, hopefully retaining everything already on the drive (If something does hiccup, it's no trouble at all to redump my CD collection).
As far as drivers are concerned, hopefully winging it for the initial installation will suffice. I've got Linux drivers for my graphics card and ASDL modem already stored on a USB drive, so that alone should hopefully get me up and running in a good enough state to get drivers for everything else as I need them.
Oh, and another thing, I'll be using the x86_64 distribution of Fedora for what it's worth. DVD image already downloaded and burned onto a bootable disc, ran a test setup up to partitioning the drives and it looks good to go.
Basically, what I want to know is if I'm missing anything? Anything else I should be doing before actually going ahead with the installation? Also, are there any good, freeware firewalls and anti-virus packages out there that I should be using for Linux, since I've never really bought the whole "security through obscurity" thing.
Any advice would be appreciated, oh, and what's good for unwrapping tarballs on a Win2000 machine? If I could get the installation manual available for download on my sister's non-internet laptop, it'll be a good companion through the install.
Thanks.
Linux - Yrrek - 12-14-2006
Quote:Basically, what I want to know is if I'm missing anything? Anything else I should be doing before actually going ahead with the installation? Also, are there any good, freeware firewalls and anti-virus packages out there that I should be using for Linux, since I've never really bought the whole "security through obscurity" thing.
I would make sure you have a seperate computer with connection available (if possible) during this time so you can hang out in a redhat channel on IRC to ask questions when needed. If you have never partitioned a drive before, it can be rather confusing, but I recommend doing it yourself as opposed to letting the installer automatically partition as it will just erase everything and use the whole drive.
Another thing to look for is a Fedora Core 6 installation guide or article that you can print off. It should be pretty easy to locate and will help tremendously.
Lastly, unless you are going to be running an email server to Windows boxes, don't worry about anti-virus. One, you don't need it, two, you won't be able to find one.
As for the firewall, I have not used firewalls much, the only thing you really need to do to secure your system at home is to make sure you have a good solid root password. I recently read that for a password to be considered secure it now needs to be 15 characters long, including numbers, letters (both capital and not), and special characters. Another thing is to not install something unless you plan on using it. For example, most of the server applications you probably won't use this go around. So don't install FTP, Apache, SAMBA, etc. unless you are certain you will use them. They are easy to install later if needed. Absolutely don't use telnet for remoting either, use SSH.
That about sums up everything I can think of off the top of my head. Here are a few links to good GNU/Linux resources. Good luck and let us know how it turns out!
http://www.linux.com - Good reference site
http://freshmeat.net/ - Lots of software packages
http://sourceforge.net/index.php - More software packages
http://www.linuxdevcenter.comnux/cmd/ - Command Reference
http://www.linuxdevices.com/ - Another good reference site
http://www.linuxpackages.net/ - Even more software packages
http://www.linuxquestions.org/ - Excellent help forums
http://www.openaddict.com/page.php?43 - Good article detailing what to expect when making the move to GNU/Linux, but apparently is currently down. =( Keep checking that link!
And finally:
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html - This is a huge list of tons of programs that are common in Windows, so that you can find it's equivalent in GNU/Linux. I suggest perusing that for a good idea of some things to look for.
Good luck!
Linux - Kylearan - 12-14-2006
Hi,
Quote:I've got Linux drivers for my graphics card and ASDL modem already stored on a USB drive, so that alone should hopefully get me up and running in a good enough state to get drivers for everything else as I need them.This may be a dumb question, but are you sure the drivers for your graphics card and the modem are 64 bit, too? If you have the sources and plan to compile them, this may be irrelevant, but if you have binaries only, make sure you have the 64 bit version, not the standard 32 bit which won't work.
Oh, and another thing, I'll be using the x86_64 distribution of Fedora for what it's worth.
I don't know what you plan to do with Linux, but you should be aware that you may run into trouble if you use 64 bit Linux if you try to install other software later. For example, some media players (like mplayer, IIRC) like to use Windows codecs, which probably are 32 bit only, Wine may not run, and you might have trouble with software that gets distributed in binary packages only. The decision to use 64 bit Linux instead of 32 bit should be thought through very carefully - but as I said, that depends on what you plan to do with it.
Quote:Also, are there any good, freeware firewalls and anti-virus packages out there that I should be using for LinuxYou won't need anti-virus software, and Linux has a firewall integrated into the kernel already, which most current distributions should have activated by default.
Quote:[...] and what's good for unwrapping tarballs on a Win2000 machine?Try 7-Zip, it's a free decompression utility which handles nearly all formats (.zip, .rar, .tgz, .bz2 etc.).
-Kylearan
Linux - NiteFox - 12-14-2006
Quote:Hi,Heh, a fair enough question. I know for certain that the graphics card drivers are 64 bit. Not sure about the modem, since the Sagem website only provided one type of Linux driver. I'm afraid as far as that's concerned, it's a hit-n-hope thing.
This may be a dumb question, but are you sure the drivers for your graphics card and the modem are 64 bit, too? If you have the sources and plan to compile them, this may be irrelevant, but if you have binaries only, make sure you have the 64 bit version, not the standard 32 bit which won't work.
Quote:Try 7-Zip, it's a free decompression utility which handles nearly all formats (.zip, .rar, .tgz, .bz2 etc.).Awesome, thanks.
-Kylearan
Linux - yangman - 12-14-2006
One thing you may want to research now is how, exactly, your going to be doing the dual booting.
Although the Windows boot loader can supposedly boot Linux, it is usually much easier to use GRUB/Lilo instead. The problem with the latter, however, is that Windows will sometimes become unhappy.
I'm not familiar with Fedora in that respect, so I can't offer any actual advice. G'luck.
Linux - NiteFox - 12-14-2006
Quote:One thing you may want to research now is how, exactly, your going to be doing the dual booting.From what I've read of Fedora, it installs and defaults to Grub.
Although the Windows boot loader can supposedly boot Linux, it is usually much easier to use GRUB/Lilo instead. The problem with the latter, however, is that Windows will sometimes become unhappy.
I'm not familiar with Fedora in that respect, so I can't offer any actual advice. G'luck.
Linux - [vL]Kp - 12-15-2006
As a quick rundown of some tools you may find useful:
rpm -- the Redhat Package Manager, this tool controls installing and removing packages on the system, as well as telling you what's installed, if any parts are damaged, and a host of other useful actions. You may not use it often, but it is worth knowing about. rpm is good at getting a package installed on the system once the package is present and all dependencies are satisfied, but getting to that point can be a pain for some things. Yum is the answer to that pain.
yum -- Yellowdog Updater Modified, a smart frontend for rpm that can download a package, and any dependencies, for you. Packages can often be installed simply by doing "yum install <package>", after which yum will tell you what package (& version) you're installing, and list any packages it wants to install to satisfy dependencies. Depending on the package and what features were enabled by the person who built it, you can occasionally get a very long list of required dependencies (my best was ~25 packages to satisfy dependencies of the 1 package I requested).
netstat -- you may know this one from Windows, but Linux netstat is far more featureful. Use it to know what connections you have up and what servers are listening. Note that the way the Linux firewall works, a server can be listening, but unable to receive connections. Thus, a socket in a LISTENING state may not be dangerous.
lsof -- LiSt Open Files. This tool shows you all open file and socket descriptors of the processes it reports on. When run as an unprivileged user, lsof is usually only able to report the descriptors of the user who ran it. When run as root, you can see every file descriptor on the system. This can be useful for figuring out which process is holding a file or socket open. Note that netstat can (with the right options) also show you which process owns a socket.
iptables -- userland command line tool to read and manipulate the kernel firewall. As Kylearan says, the firewall should be activated by default. You can use this tool to verify that, and to perform fine-grained modifications if, for example, you decide you want to expose a port to the outside world. Note that some distributions do not save your firewall rules at shutdown, but instead regenerate the rules at next boot. Therefore, modifications to your ruleset may be lost at shutdown.
This list is by no means comprehensive, and is intended primarily to give you the names of the utilities you will want. You can look up their options in their respective manual pages (via man) or texinfo pages (via info). Many websites host HTML versions of these documents, so you may also be able to find the information you need via Google. Often, the most difficult part of a new task is finding the name of the tool(s) which perform that task, after which you can usually find plenty of people to explain how to use it.
For RedHat based distributions such as Fedora Core, you can often find a wealth of settings in the files under /etc/sysconfig. Be sure to create backups before changing anything.
Linux - Gorthag - 12-15-2006
Quote:Basically, what I want to know is if I'm missing anything? Anything else I should be doing before actually going ahead with the installation? Also, are there any good, freeware firewalls and anti-virus packages out there that I should be using for Linux, since I've never really bought the whole "security through obscurity" thing.
Linux has a firewall built into the kernel the vast majority of the time, you can use iptables to manipulate it via the command line or a program like Firestarter to set it up and monitor it. There are a few anti-virus scanners for linux, but they're only for scanning mail for windows/mac viruses if you're using your box as a mail server. AFAIK there aren't any viruses that target linux worth worrying about.
Good luck and have fun!
Linux - Kylearan - 12-15-2006
Hi,
Quote:Although the Windows boot loader can supposedly boot Linux, it is usually much easier to use GRUB/Lilo instead. The problem with the latter, however, is that Windows will sometimes become unhappy.Fedora uses GRUB too, and works fine with Windows XP at least - don't know about Win2000, though.
I'm not familiar with Fedora in that respect, so I can't offer any actual advice.
I had to reinstall Grub once after I had to reinstall Windows, but fortunately that is not a problem with the bootable Linux DVDs nowadays.
-Kylearan